"Everything Changed, Would You Like Me to Elaborate?": A Qualitative Examination of the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Community Participation Among Young Adults with Early Psychosis and Their Families.

OnTrackNY provides early intervention services to young people with early psychosis throughout New York State. This report describes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on community participation of OnTrackNY program participants and their families. Thirteen participants and nine family members participated in five focus groups and three individual semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using a summary template and matrix analysis approach. Major themes highlight the negative impacts of the pandemic with reports of decreased socializing or using online means to connect, unemployment, challenges with online learning and a decrease in civic engagement. Positive impacts include more time to deepen connections with family and valued friendships and engage in activities that promote wellness and goal attainment. Implications for coordinated specialty care programs include adapting services to promote mainstream community integration and creating new strategies for community involvement of young people within a new context brought forth by the pandemic.

Best practices: a program to support shared decision making in an outpatient psychiatric medication clinic.

This column presents preliminary findings of an intervention to support shared decision making in psychopharmacology consultation. The waiting area in an urban psychiatric medication clinic was transformed into a peer-run Decision Support Center featuring a user-friendly, Internet-based software program with which clients could create a one-page computer-generated report for use in the medication consultation. The Decision Support Center was used 662 times by 189 unique users from a young-adult and general adult case management team from October 2006 to September 2007. All clients had severe mental disorders. Only ten clients refused to use the intervention at some point during the pilot study. Focus groups with medical staff (N=4), clients (N=16), case managers (N=14), and peer-specialist staff (N=3) reported that the intervention helped to create efficiencies in the consultation and empower clients to become more involved in treatment-related decision making. A randomized controlled trial is currently in process.