Community Implementation of Psychosocial Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

Rand Corporation, Santa Monica CA

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Bipolar disorder is a devastating, chronically recurring condition with significant public health impact, characterized high rates of suicide and high levels of functional and occupational impairment. In the last 15 years, combined psychosocial intervention and medication has been found to speed remission of acute symptoms, delay recurrences, and reduce inter-episode symptoms in a number of controlled trials, yet these effective psychosocial interventions are seldom implemented in community mental health settings. The proposal seeks to address these challenges by developing and piloting a comprehensive approach to implementation that will support the implementation of an evidence-based psychotherapy (EBP) for bipolar disorder in community mental health settings. The proposal builds on approaches developed during a large multi-site bipolar effectiveness trial (STEP-BD). It enhances those approaches through developing a comprehensive approach to implementation that incorporates technology-supported implementation assistance that targets key organizational factors and individual clinician factors associated with effective implementation. The project will then compare this comprehensive approach to implementation designed to improve effective implementation to an implementation-as-usual strategy in terms of feasibility and acceptability. The results will be used to support the development of a larger grant proposal to examine the effectiveness of a comprehensive approach to implementation, as well as provide important information to the field more generally regarding factors associated with effective implementation of interventions in community mental health settings.