The Technology of Measurement Feedback Systems.

Usual care in the community is far from optimal. Sufficient evidence exists that dropout rates are significant, treatment is effective for only a small proportion of clients, and that the translation of evidence-based treatments to the real world is problematic. Technology has been shown to be helpful in health care in improving the effectiveness of treatment.

Care providers' needs and perspectives on suffering and care in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia.

This exploratory study aimed to obtain insight into field-level care providers' views on suffering and healing as well as existing obstacles and needs related to providing care to their clients. This research provides a "snapshot" for a better understanding of existing care systems in two post-conflict settings. By identifying existing approaches to care and the needs of the care provider community, this research might be useful in guiding psychosocial assistance programming in post-conflict settings.

The Peabody Treatment Progress Battery: history and methods for developing a comprehensive measurement battery for youth mental health.

There is increased need for comprehensive, flexible, and evidence-based approaches to measuring the process and outcomes of youth mental health treatment. This paper introduces a special issue dedicated to the Peabody Treatment Progress Battery (PTPB), a battery of measures created to meet this need. The PTPB is an integrated set of brief, reliable, and valid instruments that can be administered efficiently at low cost and can provide systematic feedback for use in treatment planning.

The Session Report Form (SRF): are clinicians addressing concerns reported by youth and caregivers?

This study explores the relationship between clinician-reported content addressed in sessions, measured with the Session Report Form (SRF), and multi-informant problem alerts stemming from a larger battery of treatment process and progress measures. Multilevel Multinomial Logit Models were conducted with 133 clinicians and 299 youths receiving home-based treatment (N = 3,143 sessions). Results indicate a strong relationship between session content and problems related to youth symptoms and functioning as reported by clinicians in the same session.

Validation and use of the Children's Hope Scale-revised PTPB edition (CHS-PTPB): high initial youth hope and elevated baseline symptomatology predict poor treatment outcomes.

The present study examined the relationship between initial youth hope, measured within the first 4 weeks of mental health treatment, and treatment progress over time (self-, caregiver-, and clinician-report of symptom severity) in a clinical sample of youth ages 11-18 years (N = 356). The psychometric properties of the CHS-PTPB, a revised version of the Children's Hope Scale, are also presented. Results indicate the CHS-PTPB is a psychometrically sound measure for use in this population.

Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale-PTPB Version (BMSLSS-PTPB): psychometric properties and relationship with mental health symptom severity over time.

Youth life satisfaction is a component of subjective well-being, an important part of a strengths-based approach to treatment. This study establishes the psychometric properties of the Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale-PTPB Version (BMSLSS-PTPB). The BMSLSS-PTPB showed evidence of construct validity with significant correlations as expected to measures of youth hope and youth symptom severity, and no relationship as expected to youth treatment outcome expectations.

Effects of routine feedback to clinicians on mental health outcomes of youths: results of a randomized trial.

Objective: A randomized cluster controlled trial tested the hypothesis that weekly feedback to clinicians would improve the effectiveness of home-based mental health treatment received by youths in community settings.

Methods: Youths, caregivers, and clinicians at 28 sites in ten states completed assessments of the youths' symptoms and functioning every other week. Clinicians at 13 sites were provided with weekly feedback about the assessments, and clinicians at 15 sites received feedback every 90 days.

Developing effective research-practice partnerships for creating a culture of evidence-based decision making.

With growing evidence that treatment as usual may have limited effectiveness in mental health the pressure on service providers to be accountable and produce evidence as to the effectiveness of their services has increased. Measurement Feedback Systems, such as the Contextualized Feedback System (CFS), have the potential to be powerful tools for service providers in assessing their own effectiveness at multiple levels with an organization. These systems represent an amalgamation of the data driven world of science and the experience driven world of clinical practice.

Family functioning and posttraumatic stress symptoms in youth and their parents after unintentional pediatric injury.

This study examined the association between family functioning and the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in youth and parents following an unintentional traumatic injury of a child. Fifty-one parent-child dyads completed questionnaires and a structured interview assessing PTSS and family functioning. Multiple regression analyses were applied to evaluate the contribution of family functioning to the development of PTSS after controlling for demographic characteristics and known predictors.

Exploring the black box: measuring youth treatment process and progress in usual care.

The session report form (SRF) is a 25-item self-report measure scheduled to be completed by clinicians at the end of each session. This study addresses the utility of the SRF for describing session content by exploring patterns of self-reported behavior of 235 clinicians in 7,058 sessions with 600 clients. Results indicate that the SRF has a distinct subscale of treatment process and provides an adequate range of topics related to session content while also discriminating between client and clinician influences on patterns of topics addressed.

Finding the common core: evidence-based practices, clinically relevant evidence, and core mechanisms of change.

Improving the quality of children's mental health care can benefit from the adoption of evidence based and evidence informed treatments. However, the promise of moving science into practice is hampered by three core elements that need to be addressed in the current conversation among key stakeholders: (1) expanding our understanding of the clinical relevance of different types of evidence, (2) emphasizing the identification of core mechanisms of change, and (3) re-conceptualizing what evidence-based practice means. This paper focuses on these elements in an attempt to find a common core among stakeholders that may create opportunities for more inclusive conversation to move the field of children's mental health care forward.

Beyond outcomes monitoring: measurement feedback systems in child and adolescent clinical practice.

Purpose Of Review: To review the literature published during the past year relevant to identifying the best measures for monitoring progress in the treatment of child and adolescent clients and their families.

Recent Findings: The current literature shows an increasing focus on clinical utility in measure development as demonstrated by the recent emphasis on evidence-based assessment. However, there is very little research on how the inclusion of monitoring might enhance clinician practice and ultimately youth and family outcomes.

Integrating medical and psychological health care for children with atopic dermatitis.

Objective: To present descriptive data from a hospital-based interdisciplinary program that provides integrated medical and psychological health-care for children with atopic dermatitis (AD).

Methods: Clinical records were reviewed for 69 children seen in our program to examine parent-reported AD-related presenting concerns, as well as common problems and interventions addressed during family visits with the program psychologist.

Results: The most common presenting concerns included child itching and scratching and associated sleep problems.

The longitudinal impact of psychological functioning, medical severity, and family functioning in pediatric heart transplantation.

Background: Few data are available on the longitudinal psychological functioning of patients after pediatric heart transplantation. The objective of this study was to determine whether pre-transplant psychological functioning, post-transplant medical severity, and family functioning relate to the psychological functioning of pediatric patients after heart transplantation.

Methods: The study included 23 patients who underwent heart transplantation between ages 3 and 20 years, survived at least 1 year after transplantation, and had been assessed previously after transplantation between 1993 and 1995.