The Effectiveness of FMPO in Improving the Quality of Care for Persons With Severe Mental Illness.

The purpose of this study is to learn how to help veterans play a stronger role in shaping their mental health care. Specifically we want to see if we can help veterans improve their mental health treatment by helping them decide if they want to involve family in their mental health treatment, and if so, how. The study will compare a "family member provider" program to an "enhanced treatment as usual approach" in achieving these goals.

Previous research demonstrates that when families are active participants in the clinical care of persons with SMI, veterans experience improved outcomes, including treatment retention, vocational services participation, and empowerment. Numerous controlled trials show that when family involvement achieves the level of intensity and family psychoeducation (FPE), relapse rates are cut in half, and treatment adherence, clinical symptoms, and patient functioning are improved. However, despite these demonstrated benefits, rates of family involvement in the VA are unacceptably low. Even minimal family-clinician contact occurs for only one third of VA SMI patients, a lower rate than in non-VA systems of care. Therefore, it is not surprising that FPE, an intensive form of family-clinician contact, is almost never offered in the VA. In fact, a national VA survey conducted within the last three years indicated that 0% of VAs offer FPE programs conforming to EBP guidelines. Our previous experience further suggests that these deficits in care are due to combinations of provider, patient, and family factors, and that the VA presents specific challenges to implementing existing model programs, including FPE. We therefore believe it is necessary to approach the challenge of increasing family involvement in a step-wise fashion, first by engaging families in the processes of care, before trying to enlist them in more intensive programs such as FPE. Further, family engagement would likely be most effective if it builds on a foundation that empowers consumers to make informed choices regarding the involvement of relatives in care. Our group has developed and piloted a new, family-engagement approach that is gradual, patient-centered, recovery-based, and can address various barriers to improving care. It is manualized and thus replicable. The proposed study will implement and further evaluate this intervention, the brief Family Member Provider Outreach (FMPO).