A Novel Multimodal Digital Service (Moderated Online Social Therapy+) for Help-Seeking Young People Experiencing Mental Ill-Health: Pilot Evaluation Within a National Youth E-Mental Health Service.

BACKGROUND: Mental ill-health is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Moreover, 75% of mental health conditions emerge between the ages of 12 and 25 years. Unfortunately, due to lack of resources and limited engagement with services, a majority of young people affected by mental ill-health do not access evidence-based support. To address this gap, our team has developed a multimodal, scalable digital mental health service (Enhanced Moderated Online Social Therapy [MOST+]) merging real-time, clinician-delivered web chat counseling; interactive user-directed online therapy; expert and peer moderation; and peer-to-peer social networking. OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this study is to ascertain the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of MOST+. The secondary aims are to assess pre-post changes in clinical, psychosocial, and well-being outcomes and to explore the correlations between system use, perceived helpfulness, and secondary outcome variables. METHODS: Overall, 157 young people seeking help from a national youth e-mental health service were recruited over 5 weeks. MOST+ was active for 9 weeks. All participants had access to interactive online therapy and integrated web chat counseling. Additional access to peer-to-peer social networking was granted to 73 participants (46.5%) for whom it was deemed safe. The intervention was evaluated via an uncontrolled single-group study. RESULTS: Overall, 93 participants completed the follow-up assessment. Most participants had moderate (52/157, 33%) to severe (96/157, 61%) mental health conditions. All a priori feasibility, acceptability, and safety criteria were met. Participants provided mean scores of ≥3.5 (out of 5) on ease of use (mean 3.7, SD 1.1), relevancy (mean 3.9, SD 1.0), helpfulness (mean 3.5, SD 0.9), and overall experience (mean 3.9, SD 0.8). Moreover, 98% (91/93) of participants reported a positive experience using MOST+, 82% (70/93) reported that using MOST+ helped them feel better, 86% (76/93) felt more socially connected using it, and 92% (86/93) said they would recommend it to others. No serious adverse events or inappropriate use were detected, and 97% (90/93) of participants reported feeling safe. There were statistically significant improvements in 8 of the 11 secondary outcomes assessed: psychological distress (d=-0.39; P<.001), perceived stress (d=-0.44; P<.001), psychological well-being (d=0.51; P<.001), depression (d=-0.29; P<.001), loneliness (d=-0.23; P=.04), social support (d=0.30; P<.001), autonomy (d=0.36; P=.001), and self-competence (d=0.30; P<.001). There were significant correlations between system use, perceived helpfulness, and a number of secondary outcome variables. CONCLUSIONS: MOST+ is a feasible, acceptable, and safe online clinical service for young people with mental ill-health. The high level of perceived helpfulness, the significant improvements in secondary outcomes, and the correlations between indicators of system use and secondary outcome variables provide initial support for the therapeutic potential of MOST+. MOST+ is a promising and scalable platform to deliver standalone e-mental health services as well as enhance the growing international network of face-to-face youth mental health services.

Young People's Satisfaction With the Online Mental Health Service eheadspace: Development and Implementation of a Service Satisfaction Measure.

BACKGROUND: Online youth mental health services are an expanding approach to meeting service need and can be used as the first step in a stepped-care approach. However, limited evidence exists regarding satisfaction with online services, and there is no standardized service satisfaction measure. OBJECTIVE: This study implemented an online youth mental health service satisfaction questionnaire within eheadspace, an online youth mental health service. The aims were to test the questionnaire's psychometric properties and identify current levels of satisfaction among service users, as well as to identify client and service contact characteristics that affect satisfaction. METHODS: Data were collected from 2280 eheadspace clients via an online questionnaire advertised and accessed through the eheadspace service platform between September 2016 and February 2018. Client and service contact characteristics, potential outcomes, and session and service feedback data were collected. RESULTS: The service satisfaction questionnaire demonstrated high internal consistency for the overall satisfaction scale (alpha=.95) and its three subscales: session satisfaction, potential outcomes, and service satisfaction. A three-factor model was the best fit to the data, although including a higher order unidimensional construct of overall satisfaction was also a reasonable fit. Overall, young people were very satisfied with eheadspace (mean 3.60, SD 0.83). Service characteristics, but not client characteristics, were significantly associated with satisfaction. Young people were more satisfied with eheadspace when they had greater engagement as evident through receiving esupport rather than briefer service provision, having a longer session and greater interaction with the clinician, and not previously attending a face-to-face headspace center. CONCLUSIONS: The online youth mental health service satisfaction questionnaire developed for and implemented in eheadspace showed good psychometric properties. The measure is brief, has good internal consistency, and has a clear factor structure. The measure could be adapted for use in other online youth mental health services. The young people using eheadspace and completing the feedback survey were highly satisfied. Greater engagement with the online service was shown to be associated with greater satisfaction. No specific client demographic groups were shown to be more or less satisfied.

Implementation of the Enhanced Moderated Online Social Therapy (MOST+) Model Within a National Youth E-Mental Health Service (eheadspace): Protocol for a Single Group Pilot Study for Help-Seeking Young People.

BACKGROUND: There is a substantial need for youth electronic mental health (e-mental health) services. In addressing this need, our team has developed a novel moderated online social therapy intervention called enhanced moderated online social therapy (MOST+). MOST+ integrates real-time, clinician-delivered Web chat counseling, interactive user-directed online therapy, expert and peer moderation, and private and secure peer-to-peer social networking. MOST+ has been designed to give young people immediate, 24-hour access to anonymous, evidence-based, and short-term mental health care. OBJECTIVE: The primary aims of this pilot study were to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of the intervention. Secondary aims were to assess prepost changes in key psychosocial outcomes and collect qualitative data for future intervention refinement. METHODS: MOST+ will be embedded within eheadspace, an Australian youth e-mental health service, and will be evaluated via an uncontrolled single-group study. Approximately 250 help-seeking young people (16-25 years) will be progressively recruited to the intervention from the eheadspace home page over the first 4 weeks of an 8-week intervention period. All participants will have access to evidence-based therapeutic content and integrated Web chat counseling. Additional access to moderated peer-to-peer social networking will be granted to individuals for whom it is deemed safe and appropriate, through a three-tiered screening process. Participants will be enrolled in the MOST+ intervention for 1 week, with the option to renew their enrollment across the duration of the pilot. Participants will complete a survey at enrollment to assess psychological well-being and other mental health outcomes. Additional assessment will occur following account deactivation (ie, after participant has opted not to renew their enrollment, or at trial conclusion) and will include an online survey and telephone interview assessing psychological well-being and experience of using MOST+. RESULTS: Recruitment for the study commenced in October 2017. We expect to have initial results in March 2018, with more detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses to follow. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first Australia-wide research trial to pilot an online social media platform merging real-time clinical support, expert and peer moderation, interactive online therapy, and peer-to-peer social networking. The importance of the project stems from the need to develop innovative new models for the efficient delivery of responsive evidence-based online support to help-seeking young people. If successful, this research stands to complement and enhance e-mental health services in Australia.

Psychotic symptoms with sexual content in the "ultra high risk" for psychosis population: frequency and association with sexual trauma.

Individuals at "ultra high risk" (UHR) for psychosis have been found to experience high rates of sexual trauma. An aetiological role for sexual trauma has been proposed for psychotic disorders and may influence psychotic symptom content. We aimed to investigate the relationship between previous sexual trauma and reported psychotic-like experiences, in particular psychotic symptoms with a sexual content in a UHR sample. We investigated the prevalence of "attenuated" or "subthreshold" psychotic symptoms with a sexual content in a consecutive series of patients recruited to a specialist UHR clinic. Patient's experience of general and sexual trauma was rated separately using a trauma questionnaire based on the list of events qualifying as traumas under DSM IV. The sample consisted of 92 patients, 14 (15.2%) had experienced an attenuated psychotic symptom with sexual content. The most common symptom was overvalued ideas/delusions of being watched in the shower/toilet or undressing. A considerable proportion of the sample (36.2%) had experienced sexual trauma (sexually molested or raped). Presence of attenuated psychotic symptoms with sexual content was related to history of previous sexual trauma (OR 7.17, P<0.01). This relationship remained significant when other traumatic experiences, PTSD diagnosis, age and sex were adjusted for. Further research into this relationship with regard to outcome and treatment is warranted.

Identifying the ultra-high risk (prodromal) population: evaluation of training workshops with mental health services.

OBJECTIVE: Recent years have witnessed widespread interest in the early phase of psychotic disorders. The most widely used approach to identify individuals in the prodromal phase is the ultra-high risk (UHR) approach, which combines known trait and state risk factors for psychotic disorder. The Personal Assessment and Crisis Evaluation Clinic introduced the Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental States (CAARMS) in order to assess UHR status. A training DVD and manual in the use of the CAARMS was recently developed in order to assist with UHR identification. The current paper reports the outcome of a series of training workshops with mental health professionals based around this DVD. The research aim was to investigate whether the training workshops assisted mental health professionals in their confidence and ability to accurately identify UHR cases and distinguish these from non-UHR and first-episode psychosis (FEP) cases. METHOD: A total of 137 mental health workers participated in the training sessions across eight training sites. The training sessions consisted of four modules: theoretical background; rating written vignettes for UHR, non-UHR or FEP status; viewing and discussing the CAARMS Training DVD; and re-rating matched written vignettes for UHR, non-UHR or FEP status. RESULTS: Participants' confidence in identifying UHR cases and in using the CAARMS increased as a result of the workshop. Participants' ability to correctly identify UHR-positive cases did not improve as a result of the workshop. This may have been the result of a ceiling effect due to the baseline ability to identify UHR-positive cases being high. But there was a trend for participants' ability to correctly identify UHR-negative cases to improve as a result of the workshop. CONCLUSIONS: UHR training workshops are a valuable means of increasing mental health workers' confidence in identifying UHR patients. Future UHR training programmes with experienced mental health professionals should pay particular attention to the correct identification of UHR-negative cases.

Recent approaches to psychological interventions for people at risk of psychosis.

With the emerging global focus on early psychosis, indicated prevention in schizophrenia has increasingly become a focus of psychiatric research interests. It has been argued that CBT may have some advantages compared with antipsychotics regarding this issue. According to MEDLINE, EMBASE and Psycinfo two completed randomised controlled trials (RCTs; PACE, Melbourne, Australia; EDIE, Manchester, United Kingdom) and one ongoing RCT with only preliminary results published so far (FETZ, Cologne/Bonn, Germany) on indicated prevention in schizophrenia including manualised and standardised psychological treatment can be identified. The aims of the present paper are to present and discuss the three approaches with regard to (I) inclusion, exclusion and exit criteria, (II) characteristics of interventions and (III) evaluations. All interventions use intake, exclusion and exit criteria, which have been evaluated in prospective follow-along studies. The approaches are based on the general structure and principles of cognitive behavioural therapy which have been developed, applied and evaluated in a wide range of mental health problems. Despite several methodological limitations, the first evaluations indicate some effects with regard to three possible aims of early intervention: (1) improvement of present possible pre-psychotic symptoms, (2) prevention of social decline/stagnation and (3) prevention or delay of progression to psychosis. Even though the first results are promising, we conclude that several ethical issues have to be taken into consideration and further predictive and therapeutic research is needed to judge whether psychological intervention is a realistic option for the treatment of people at risk of psychosis.

The initial prodrome to bipolar affective disorder: prospective case studies.

BACKGROUND: The initial prodrome to bipolar disorder has received very little attention to date, with most of the available data only addressing the prodrome to relapse. This study presents several prospective case studies of the initial prodrome to bipolar affective disorder. METHODS: Three patients are presented who developed bipolar disorder during their treatment at the Personal Assessment and Crisis Evaluation Clinic (PACE). They were prospectively interviewed over a 12-month period using standard clinical research interviews. RESULTS: These patients met the criteria for bipolar disorder by the end of the treatment period. Depressive symptoms were the main reason for their first clinical presentation, with mania developing at a later date. Other comorbidities were observed before they were diagnosed with bipolar disorder. LIMITATIONS: The generalisability of our findings was constrained because of the small sample size. Furthermore, our findings are likely to be influenced by the intake criteria used at PACE, a clinic that primarily aims at identifying patients at risk of psychosis rather than bipolar disorder. CONCLUSION: Our study provides information about the initial prodrome to bipolar disorder, which has previously been neglected in research studies. We found there were no prodrome features that clearly distinguished between patients who go on to develop bipolar disorder and those who develop schizophrenia. We hope our prospective data will be the starting point for subsequent studies, with the aim of applying these findings to developing suitable preventative interventions for bipolar disorder.

The PACE Clinic: identification and management of young people at "ultra" high risk of psychosis.

Over the past decade, both clinical and research interest in the early stages of psychotic disorders has grown. This has been associated with research suggesting that early intervention in these disorders may limit their impact on the life of the affected individual and his or her family. It has also been recognized that the biological and psychological changes underpinning the development of psychotic disorders may already be active in the prepsychotic or prodromal phase. It has been suggested that efforts to prevent psychotic disorders should be focused on this phase of emerging illness. In this article, the authors review work conducted at the PACE Clinic in Melbourne, Australia since 1994. This clinical research program was established to develop strategies for identifying young people at high risk for developing a psychotic disorder within a short period. The program has also investigated biological and psychological processes thought to underlie the development of psychosis and evaluated potential preventive interventions.