National institute awards Center for Adolescent and Family Studies grant to study mental health

The IU Center for Adolescent and Family Studies and Vanderbilt University were awarded a $3.8 million grant from the National Institute for Mental Health to study methods to improve mental health services.

Director of CAFS and professor of counseling and psychology in the IU School of Education Tom Sexton co-developed an evidence-based treatment that will be used in the five-year study.

“This study is an attempt to see if — with the system we’ve developed — we can provide ongoing and regular real-time feedback to clinicians to see if it results in improved outcomes for children and adolescents in the mental health system,” Sexton said in an IU press release.

With Vanderbilt’s “Contextualized Feedback System,” the project will apply functional family therapy — a clinical treatment of violent, criminal, behavioral, school and conduct problems with youth and their families, according to the press release.
The project represents a potential positive change in how mental health services provide care, Sexton said in the release.

A majority of the functional family therapy training, monitoring and developing adjustments in service based on the feedback will be conducted by IU staff members, while Vanderbilt staff will gather most of the data. The universities began working with each other more than three years ago.

“Together, we form this computer-based system — the functional family therapy and CFS system — that if it’s successful here certainly will have applications many other places,” Sexton said in the release.

— Bailey Loosemore