Individual placement and support, supported education in young people with mental illness: an exploratory feasibility study.

Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of adapting individual placement and support (IPS) to education for young people presenting to a tertiary mental health service who wished to re-engage with or be supported in their education.

Methods: The study was an uncontrolled trial. Twenty young people with severe mental illness were recruited and worked with an educational specialist providing adapted IPS for education (IPSed). Demographic, educational and symptom measures were collected at baseline. Educational outcome was collected at the end of the 6-month intervention. Data presented are descriptive.

Results: Individual placement and support for education was found to be feasible with 95% of the participants successfully completing the intervention. Eighteen of the 19 who participated through to the conclusion of the intervention achieved positive educational outcomes.

Conclusions: It is well established that education is the foundation of career, but many people with mental illness drop out of their education with the onset of illness in adolescence or early adulthood. There has been a dearth of interventions to reconnect people with mental illness to secondary education and training. This study demonstrates that it is feasible to adapt IPS to focus exclusively on education at the outset of illness. Further larger studies are needed to confirm these results and create an evidence base for implementation of IPSed in routine practice for the treatment of early stage mental illness.