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Preventing schizophrenia and severe mental illness: a grand challenge for social work
- Author:
- DeVYLDER Jordan E.
- Journal article citation:
- Research on Social Work Practice, 26(4), 2016, pp.449-459.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Schizophrenia is a leading cause of disability and health expenditure worldwide and is associated with homelessness, substance use, familial and social isolation, unemployment, involvement with the criminal justice system, stigma, and excess mortality. Prevention may be feasible through intervention with help-seeking “clinical high-risk” youth with early symptoms of psychosis. A social work approach to psychosis prevention would build upon initial evidence that prevention is effective for this population and would add cross-disciplinary coordination of services, mobilisation of community resources, and expertise in psychosocial interventions. Recent governmental funding priorities and policies have increasingly focused on early intervention for psychosis, making rapid change feasible. This substantial potential for change, the massive savings in the quality of lives that would accrue, and the broad impact across social work domains are consistent with the goals of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare’s Grand Challenges Initiative. (Edited publisher abstract)
Social work training intervention to increase referral rates for preventive psychosis services: a randomized trial
- Authors:
- DeVYLDER Jordan E., et al
- Journal article citation:
- Research on Social Work Practice, 32(3), 2022, pp.322-327.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Social workers are employed in a broad range of community settings, in which they may be able to identify youth with emerging psychotic symptoms and facilitate connection to specialized services. Methods: This randomized controlled trial tested the efficacy of a training intervention for social workers (N = 959) intended to increase the volume of referrals and rate of successful referrals to specialized early psychosis services. Results: During the 2-year study period, referrals to the early intervention program nearly doubled, t (df = 11) = 5.46, p < 0.001. Additionally, the rate of successful referrals was greater among social workers who received the active training (41.7%) compared to the other referral sources (19.2%), X2 (df = 1, n = 311) = 3.69, p = 0.055. Conclusions: The active training was associated with a marginally greater rate of successful referrals. Overall referrals increased greatly during the training period although this could not be linked to specific participants, suggesting contamination effects may have increased community awareness of early intervention services. (Edited publisher abstract)
A systematic review of the familial co-aggregation of schizophrenia with non-psychotic disorders
- Authors:
- DeVYLDER Jordan E., OH Hans Y.
- Journal article citation:
- Social Work in Mental Health, 12(3), 2014, pp.280-301.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
Schizophrenia is a highly heritable mental health condition, likely due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Given that genes appear to predispose offspring to vulnerabilities or endophenotypes rather than to the disorder itself, and that environmental risk-factors tend to be shared across psychopathologies, it may be expected that other non-psychotic conditions to likewise aggregate with schizophrenia in families. This article reviews studies on familial co-aggregation of schizophrenia with other disorders, published over the past two decades. Twenty-two studies met inclusion criteria. Although many early family and cohort studies lacked statistical power due to small sample sizes, the overriding pattern is one in favor of familial co-aggregation of schizophrenia with a broad range of psychiatric conditions, including affective, anxiety, substance use, and childhood-onset disorders, which has been confirmed in recent population-based studies. Several causal hypotheses are proposed to explain these associations, which should be directly tested in future studies. These results suggest that family-based social work interventions for schizophrenia may benefit from an added emphasis on prevention and treatment of common mental health conditions among family members. (Edited publisher abstract)