Using a stakeholder-engaged, iterative, and systematic approach to adapting collaborative decision skills training for implementation in VA psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery centers.

Background: Adaptation of interventions is inevitable during translation to new populations or settings. Systematic approach to adaptation can ensure that fidelity to core functions of the intervention are preserved while optimizing implementation feasibility and effectiveness for the local context. In this study, we used an iterative, mixed methods, and stakeholder-engaged process to systematically adapt Collaborative Decision Skills Training for Veterans with psychosis currently participating in VA Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Centers.

Pupillary Responses as a Biomarker of Diminished Effort Associated With Defeatist Attitudes and Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia.

Background: The hypothesis that defeatist performance attitudes are associated with decreased goal-directed task effort and negative symptoms in consumers with schizophrenia was investigated by using pupillary responses as a biomarker of task effort. Pupillary dilation during cognitive tasks provides a biomarker of effort devoted to the task, with greater dilation indicating greater effort.

Methods: Defeatist attitudes were assessed in 149 consumers with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 50 healthy control subjects, and consumers were divided into three groups (tertile split) with respect to severity of defeatist attitudes.

Teaching Spanish to veterans with psychiatric disabilities: A creative approach to rehabilitation and recovery.

Topic: A Spanish course was heuristically designed to serve as a context to bring together components of various therapies and was offered to veterans with psychiatric disabilities enrolled in a psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery center.

Purpose: Bilingualism has been associated with enhanced cognitive function and deserves more attention in psychiatric rehabilitation research. Developing opportunities for language instruction to potentially improve cognitive and community integration is explored.