The purpose of this clinical trial was to test the hypothesis that clients of clinicians
who were scheduled to receive weekly feedback on their clients' progress would improve
faster than clients of clinicians who were not scheduled to receive weekly feedback.

Effects of Routine Feedback to Clinicians on Youth Mental Health Outcomes: A Randomized Cluster Design

Mental Health Wellness 1

Psychosocial Problem

The primary approach to improving psychosocial treatment for youths has been to implement
evidence-supported treatments (ESTs) in community services. However, this approach has
not produced clear cut results of effectiveness. A recently developed alternative is to
improve outcomes through routine measurement and feedback to clinicians and supervisors.
The investigators used a cluster randomized experiment with 28 sites affiliated with a
national behavioral health organization to assess whether clients of clinicians who were
scheduled to receive weekly feedback on their clients' progress would improve faster than
clients of clinicians who were not scheduled to receive weekly feedback.

Contextualized Feedback Systems (CFS)tm

The SFSS is part of a battery of clinical measures (Peabody Treatment Progress
Battery:PTPB) developed by the researchers. It assesses change in closely-timed repeated
measurements. Parallel forms are completed by youths, caregivers, and clinicians at the
end of treatment sessions. The SFSS includes 32 items that ask the respondent to rate how
frequently in the last two weeks the youth experienced emotions or exhibited behaviors
linked to typical mental health disorders for youths (e.g., ADHD, conduct disorder,
depression).

The BMSLSS-CEPI is a revised version of the Brief Multidimensional Students' Life
Satisfaction Scale (Seligson, Huebner, & Valois, 2003). The BMSLSS-CEPI was designed to
assess global life satisfaction as well as domain specific satisfaction with family,
friends, school, self and living environment. Life satisfaction may be targeted directly
or indirectly with treatment and thus can be thought of as a positive, or
strengths-based, indicator of treatment progress (outcome).

The CHS (Snyder et al., 1997), a public domain measure used with youth in this study,
assesses youth hopefulness. The measure asks youths to report on their ability to
generate paths toward goals and persevere toward those goals. Youth hopefulness is
conceptually an important factor in the successful treatment of emotional or behavioral
disorders, constituting an outcome that may be affected by the treatment process.

After clinical questionnaires are entered into the system (CFStm), an automated online
report is available weekly to clinicians in the experimental group that shows current
mental health status of youths, alerts, and trends over time based on youth, caregiver,
and clinician responses. Reports also show some clinical data on caregivers.

Clinicians in the control group do not have access to weekly feedback. Instead, they
receive reports every 90 days after the youth is enrolled in CFStm. Because the average
duration of CFS enrollment was 3.8 months, many youths would have been discharged before
the first 90-day report became available three months after treatment start. Thus, we
considered the 90-day feedback group to be essentially a no-feedback group.

Effects of Routine Feedback to Clinicians on Youth Mental Health Outcomes: A Randomized Cluster Design

About this trial

Study ID

Status

Type

Phase

Placebo

Accepting

Not accepting

Trial Timing

What is this trial about?

What are the participation requirements?

Locations

Location

Status