R34-1: Stress and Coping Among High School Students
Adolescence is often when mental illness begins to emerge. Failure to detect early subthreshold symptoms of incipient disorders is a major impediment to prevention and diagnosis. Risk factors for minoritized youth can be heightened due to their greater likelihood of experiencing discrimination and socioeconomic barriers and their subsequent impacts on access and engagement in treatment and overall wellness. This project aims to implement and test tools necessary to prevent transitions to mental illness among at-risk youth, particularly minoritized youth. The overall aim of this project is to prevent and remediate a surge in youth mental illness and to reduce persistent treatment disparities. First, we use a remote adaptive testing technology, “K-CAT+”, to provide rapid community-based screening. Second, we will evaluate the effectiveness of a targeted, online health promotion intervention, COPE2Thrive(C2T), to build resilience in a diverse sample of school-aged youth. Third, we will assess whether this approach mitigates increased risk faced by minoritized youth.
Investigators: Margaret Weiss, MD, PhD & Eleanor Richards, PhD
R34-2: Real-World Effectiveness of Mental Health Interventions for Suicide Prevention in At-Risk Youth
Identifying effective suicide prevention strategies for diverse populations of youth at high risk of suicide has enormous public health importance. Suicide rates for persons aged 10-24 have increased by more than 50% over the last decade in nearly every state and for nearly every minoritized group, with particularly concerning increases in suicide attempts among black youth. Little is known about the long-term effects of community-based treatment in urban safety net healthcare systems with diverse youth populations. In this project, we aim to utilize a unique clinical-sociocontextual dataset of over 15,000 youth patients at high risk for suicide to conduct comparative effectiveness research (CER) to identify effective treatments for suicide prevention and how these differ across diverse groups. We will assess long-term treatment outcomes through present-day follow-up computerized adaptive testing with a sub-sample of patients to analyze current-day suicidal outcomes, psychopathology, and measure social determinants and quality of care.
Investigators: Nicholas Carson, MD, FRCPC & Philip Wang MD, DrPH
R34-3: Understanding the Role of Trauma Over the Lifecourse in Order to Improve Trauma-Informed Treatment
Accumulating evidence links childhood psychological trauma to increased likelihood and severity of mental illness and poor outcomes. By age sixteen, 60% of children have experienced an adverse childhood event and 30% have experienced more than one event, with disproportionately higher rates of adverse childhood events in economically disadvantaged, minoritized communities. In this study, we use a clinical-sociocontextual dataset of more than 600,000 patients, linked to insurance claims, criminal justice, and individual- and community-level social determinants of health data, to better understand the trajectories from psychological trauma to mental illness, predictors of negative and positive trajectories, and how mental health treatment mitigates negative trajectories for minoritized populations.
Investigators: Benjamin Cook, PhD, MPH & Michael Flores, PhD, MPH