Client Outreach in Los Angeles County's Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program: Strategies and Barriers to Engagement.

Purpose: Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) programs can compel treatment-refusing individuals to participate in mental health treatment via civil court order. In California's AOT programs, individuals first must be offered 30 days of outreach services and can accept services voluntarily. This study examines the use of outreach strategies in an AOT program with the potential for voluntary or involuntary enrollment. Methods: Outreach staff completed a survey in which they reported and rated outreach strategies and barriers to treatment for 487 AOT-referred individuals. Results: Outreach staff reported using a broad array of strategies to persuade and engage clients. Supportive and persuasive strategies were most common. More coercive strategies, including court order, were used when needed. More clients enrolled voluntarily (39.4%) than involuntarily (7.2%). Conclusions: Outreach, coupled with the strategic used of potential court involvement, can lead to voluntary enrollment of treatment-refusing individuals with many, often severe, barriers to engaging in outpatient treatment.

The complexity of chronic painThe Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain Haider Warraich Basic Books, 2022. 320 pp.

A physician confronts an elusive physical phenomenon.

System Transformation Under the California Mental Health Services Act: Implementation of Full-Service Partnerships in L.A. County.

OBJECTIVE: The study evaluated the effect of California's Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) on the structure, volume, location, and patient centeredness of Los Angeles County public mental health services. METHODS: This prospective mixed-methods study (2006-2013) was based in five Los Angeles County public mental health clinics, all with usual care and three with full-service partnerships (FSPs). FSPs are MHSA-funded programs designed to "do whatever it takes" to provide intensive, recovery-oriented, team-based, integrated services for clients with severe mental illness. FSPs were compared with usual care on outpatient services received (claims data) and on organizational climate, recovery orientation, and provider-client working alliance (surveys and semistructured interviews), with regression adjustment for client and provider characteristics. RESULTS: In the first year after admission, FSP clients (N=174) received significantly more outpatient services than did usual care clients (N=298) (5,238 versus 1,643 minutes, p<.001), and a larger proportion of these services were field based (22% versus 2%, p<.001). Compared with usual care clients, FSP clients reported more recovery-oriented services (p<.001) and a better provider-client working alliance (p=.01). Compared with usual care providers (N=130), FSP providers (N=42) reported more stress (p<.001) and lower morale (p<.001). CONCLUSIONS: Los Angeles County's public mental health system was able to transform service delivery in response to well-funded policy mandates. For providers, a structure emphasizing accountability and patient centeredness was associated with greater stress, despite smaller caseloads. For clients, service structure and volume created opportunities to build stronger provider-client relationships and address their needs and goals.

Implementation Status of Assisted Outpatient Treatment Programs: A National Survey.

OBJECTIVE: The authors' objective was to determine how assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) has been implemented in actual practice in the 45 states with AOT statutes. METHODS: A national survey of AOT programs was conducted to examine the extent to which AOT programs have been implemented and variations in implementation models. RESULTS: Although 45 states have current AOT statutes, the most active programs were identified in 20 states. These programs varied considerably in style of implementation, criteria applied, agency responsible, use of a treatment plan, monitoring procedures, and numbers of participants involved. Three implementation models were identified: community gateway, hospital transition, and surveillance (or safety net). Common problems included inadequate resources, lack of enforcement power, inconsistent monitoring, and weakness of interagency collaboration. CONCLUSIONS: AOT is a widely applied and much-discussed mechanism for providing treatment to individuals with serious mental illnesses nationally. The uneven implementation of AOT programs within and across states highlights the ambivalence in the community, by judicial officials, and by mental health clinicians about the role and scope of AOT and the difficulties of implementation under existing funding constraints and statutory limitations.

Preserving the child as a respondent: initiating patient-centered interviews in a US outpatient tertiary care pediatric pain clinic.

This article identifies some of the challenges of implementing patient-centeredness in multiparty clinical visits. Specifically, it describes four interview practices with which clinicians address these challenges in a US outpatient tertiary care pediatric pain clinic. Using the qualitative method of conversation analysis, we analyze clinicians' child-directed (ages 10-18) interviewing during the initial stage of 51 intake visits. In particular, we analyze the challenges involved in open-ended questioning, a form of interviewing associated with patient-centeredness. Open-ended questioning presents participants with competing demands: although it gives children an opportunity to talk about their illness in their own terms, it also asks them to be responsible for a larger part of the communication work. Moreover, the presence of a parent as an alternative informant can lead to the loss of the child as an informant if clinicians fail to give the child, particularly younger ones, enough guidance in answering. We argue that a flexible range of interviewing practices may be a step towards offsetting children's and parents'past negative experiences with clinicians, improving patient outcomes and implementing child/patient-centeredness.

"I can't be what I want to be": children's narratives of chronic pain experiences and treatment outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Chronic or recurrent nonmalignant pain is a significant problem for many children and adolescents and often limits the child's participation in normal physical, academic, and social activities. OBJECTIVE: To better understand the impact of chronic or recurrent pain on children within the context of their own lives and experiences, using qualitative analysis, and to suggest the applications of the narrative method to clinical practice. DESIGN: Grounded theory and narrative analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted at baseline and 6-12 months following clinic intake. SETTING: Subject homes. PATIENTS: Fifty-three children ages 10-17 presenting with recurrent pain to a university-based pain clinic. This sample did not differ significantly from the overall clinic population during the study period. RESULTS: Five common themes were identified; these suggested that isolation, changed self-perception, activity limitations, concerns about barriers to future goals, and lack of medical validation were important to the children's perceived impact of pain on their lives. Five narratives were identified, each of which provided a coherent, integrated description of the factors and perspectives presented by a specific subset of children at baseline. These narratives were then compared against the children's reports of improvement in pain and functioning at 6-12 months; from this comparison, a sixth narrative of therapeutic change emerged for some of the children. CONCLUSIONS: The authors suggest that physicians and parents who take the initiative to elicit the child's narrative can help the child to rewrite the story to promote therapeutic change, a better outcome, and higher satisfaction.

"Just be in pain and just move on": Functioning limitations and strategies in the lives of children with chronic pain.

This paper uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the impact of pain-associated functioning limitations on children's lives and the strategies they develop to try to continue functioning. Forty-five children ages 10-18 completed standardized questionnaires and participated in semistructured interviews prior to intake at a university-based tertiary clinic specializing in the treatment of pediatric chronic pain. All the children reported that pain limited their functioning in everyday activities and that these limitations caused them frustration and distress. Qualitative analysis identified three distinct functioning patterns or groups, which were designated as Adaptive, Passive, and Stressed. The groups did not differ significantly in demographics or clinical pain characteristics. Adaptive children continued to participate in many activities and were more likely to realize that focusing on pain would heighten their perception of pain. Children in this group reported more effective use of distraction and of other independently developed strategies to continue functioning. Passive children had given up most activities, tended to use passive distraction when in pain, and were more likely to feel isolated and different from peers. Stressed children described themselves as continuing to function, but were highly focused on their pain and the difficulties of living with it. The qualitative groupings were supported by quantitative findings that Stressed children reported a higher degree of social anxiety than did Passive children and were more likely than the other groups to report experiencing pain throughout the day. Finally, Adaptive children were rated by their parents as having better overall health compared to Passive children.

A capsule history of pain management.

Pain is a complex clinical problem. Assessment depends on verbal report, and the patient's physical perceptions may be modified by cognitive and affective factors. The salience of pain as a problem in its own right has grown since 1945 and new therapeutic alternatives have developed from research and from new theoretical perspectives. This short historical review of the highlights of the history of pain management gives particular emphasis to the 20th century and to chronic and cancer pain.