3cisd

3C Institute

Assist-MH Digital Technologies to Support School Mental Health Care

National Institute of Mental Health
ID: 1R43MH138260-01
PI: MELISSA DEROSIER
TERM: 07/24 – 07/25

Rates of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems among youth are concerningly high, with one in four reporting a diagnosable disorder during the pandemic and its aftermath. Half of all lifetime mental health disorders begin by age 14, but on average, services are not received until 8 to 10 years after symptom onset. Schools are the primary mental health service setting for youth. Therefore, it is more critical than ever to develop effective, scalable products to support school mental health (SMH) providers as they struggle to meet the ever-growing mental health needs of students. Digital technologies offer a cost- and time-efficient medium to help SMH providers optimize their limited in-person time and augment their care to address the clinical needs of as many youth as possible. The goal of this SBIR is to create Assist-MH, a new interactive digital support system for SMH providers. The proposed Assist-MH product will offer an innovative suite of SMH supports, including an interactive treatment planning tool that generates provider-led and student self-paced MH strategies tailored to the student’s individual needs, along with built-in tools to facilitate monitoring student progress over time. In Phase I, we will focus on anxiety and depression for 12-to-17-year-old students as this age group has reported a concerning increase in these MH symptoms in recent years. To guide the development of Assist-MH, we will conduct stakeholder groups to gather initial input on current challenges and opportunities and specific recommendations to guide software design and content development. We will use the stakeholder input to finalize specific strategies and components from the Planning and Admin Centers to be built into the Phase I fully functioning prototype. MH providers will use the prototype with students they serve over a two-month trial period. We expect significant improvement in both provider and student outcomes as well as high usability, feasibility, and value ratings, yielding a positive proof of concept for the full Assist-MH product. Phase I findings will be used to guide Phase II refinement and expansion. As schools are the primary setting where youth obtain MH care, Assist-MH offers the potential to provide crucial support to SMH providers in their efforts to address our nation’s youth mental health crisis.

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DEB CHILDRESS, PHD

Chief of Research and Learning Content

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Childress obtained her PhD in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to 3C Institute, she served as a research associate and a postdoctoral fellow in the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on a longitudinal imaging study aimed at identifying the early markers of autism through behavioral and imaging methodologies. She has 19 years of autism research experience, during which she has examined the behavioral, personality, and cognitive characteristics of individuals with autism and their family members. Dr. Childress also has experience developing behavioral and parent report measurement tools, coordinating multi-site research studies, and collecting data from children and families. She has taught courses and seminars in general child development, autism, and cognitive development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Expertise

  • autism
  • early development
  • behavioral measurement
  • integrating behavioral and biological measurement

Education

  • Postdoctoral fellowship, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (Institutional NRSA-NICHD), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • PhD, developmental psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • BS, psychology (minor in sociology), University of Iowa

Selected Publications

  • Elison, J. T., Wolff, J. J., Heimer, D. C., Paterson, S. J., Gu, H., Hazlett, H. C., Styner, M, Gerig, G., & Piven, J. (in press). Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months. Developmental Science.
  • Wassink, T. H., Vieland, V. J., Sheffield, V. C., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., Childress, D. & Piven, J. (2008). Posterior probability of linkage analysis of autism dataset identifies linkage to chromosome 16. Psychiatric Genetics,18(2),85-91.
  • Losh, M., Childress, D., Lam K. & Piven, J. (2008). Defining key features of the broad autism phenotype: A comparison across parents of multiple- and single-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 147B(4):424-33.
  • Wassink, T. H., Piven, J., Vieland, V. J., Jenkins, L., Frantz R., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., … Sheffield, V.C. (2005). Evaluation of the chromosome 2q37.3 gene CENTG2 as an autism susceptibility gene. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 136, 36-44.
  • Barrett, S., Beck, J., Bernier, R., Bisson, E., Braun, T., Casavant, T., Childress, D., … Vieland, V. (1999). An autosomal genomic screen for autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 88, 609-615. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19991215)88:63.0.CO;2-L
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Landa, R., Santangelo, S., Jacobi, D. & Childress, D. (1997). Personality and language characteristics in parents from multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 74, 398-411.
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Jacobi, D., Childress, D. & Arndt, S. (1997). Broader autism phenotype: Evidence from a family history study of multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 185-190.