Foreword
Alongside the global mental health community’s call-to-action for community-based solutions in addressing the complex care of persons with histories of serious mental illness (SMI), there persists a lack of formal materials and resources that provide guidance to healthcare professionals on the operations and practices of community-based interventions in distinction from, and integration with, traditional care models. This lack of guiding resources is unfortunate, as the growing conceptualization of best practices for addressing the life-long impacts of SMI often include a continuity of coordinated psychiatric, medical, and community care in addressing the combined high comorbidity of chronic health conditions and diminished social determinants of health in SMI.
Despite these best practice recommendations, integrated care has often only been operationalized between medical and psychiatric partners, under-leveraging the crucial social supports community- based programs provide in addressing circumstances of loneliness, diminished quality of life opportunities, and stigma for persons with SMI. Another consequence of this operational exclusion has been that many healthcare professionals report little knowledge of, or exposure to, community- based interventions even though community-based programs often provide the highest touch services out of all healthcare partners working with SMI populations.
In addressing this disparity, the Partners in Care curriculum provides a resource guide for both the early and continuing education of healthcare professionals in the unique and coordinated care contributions of community-based programs for SMI. Highlighting the operations of a leading community intervention, known as the Clubhouse model, the therapeutic strategies of the Clubhouse model are outlined in their capacity to operate in coordination with traditional care models, providing a best practice example and reference from which parallel and adjacent integrated care strategies can be innovated and motivated. The goal of Partners in Care is to provide a curriculum resource for educators, policy-makers, and active practitioners, participating in the larger endeavour of expanding the educational content for healthcare professionals that widens the pedagogical lens in working with SMI.
Even in care environments where community-based resources for SMI may not exist, we hope that this curriculum can serve as an advocacy resource for the effectiveness of these programs in addressing the often-unmet needs of persons with SMI. Educational resources are essential to the framing of recovery optimism, potential, and culture among healthcare professionals working with SMI in order to promote the feasibility of integrated treatment strategies that leverage community-based interventions. We hope that this curriculum is an initial step of many that leads to the greater promotion and elevation of community-based interventions.
Kevin Rice – Director of Research Development & Social Practitioner, Fountain House
Launch Event
Module 1 – Integrated Care and the Need for Community in Addressing Serious Mental Illness (SMI)
Module 2 – Psychosocial Rehabilitation: The Clubhouse Model
Module 3 – Practice Guidance for Mental Health Professionals in Leveraging Community-Based Partners
A brief history
Psychiatry has historically been absent in Clubhouse programs with the exceptions of professional referrals. Although programs work closely with psychiatry and other mental health professionals, this practice has historically been separated as ‘clinical’ and ‘psychosocial’ services. One of the primary factors has been a lack of training, information, and access of clubhouses for individuals living with serious mental illness and their communities.
Well-trained psychiatrists and other mental health professionals would directly reduce the growing unmet mental and behavioral health needs of people living with serious mental illness by understanding ways to partner and collaborate with psychosocial clubhouses. With requisite training specific to the role of psychiatry in recovery from serious mental illness and partnering with psychosocial clubhouses, these and other mental health professionals are ideally poised to provide a continuity of care for individuals living with serious mental illness as well as improving the social determinants of health for the community.
In September 2019, Fountain House New York teamed with Clubhouse International, Clubhouse Europe, Magnolia Clubhouse, Wayne State University, and an external advisory committee comprised of 20 key opinion leaders in psychiatry and research from around the world. The Fountain House New York team created a flexible new curriculum in existing forums through various modalities.
The aim of this training is to provide psychiatrists and other mental health professionals working with individuals living with serious mental illness, greater awareness through training for partnering with psychosocial clubhouses in the U.S and globally.
Ralph Aquila, MD – Senior Medical Director, Fountain House
Lori D’Angelo, PhD – Executive Director, Magnolia Clubhouse
Francesca Pernice, PhD – Director, Counseling Psychology at Wayne State University
Special Thanks…
Partners in Care Advisory Committee
Dr. Eric D. Achtyes, MD, MS
Dr. Ralph Aquila, MD
Dr. Sudipto Chatterjee, MBBS, MCH
Joel Corcoran, M.Ed.
Larry Davidson, Ph.D.
Mary Docherty, Ph.D.
Dr. Hamid N.Dabkolhar
Esko Hänninen, BSc, MSc
Dr. Thomas R. Insel, MD
Dr. Afzal Javed, MBBS, MCPS, D. PSYCH (London)
Prof. Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, MBBS, DPM, MD
Dr. Gerald Mcguire, MD
Dr. Roberto Mezzina, MD
Cyrus Daniel Napolitano
Dr. Howard Owens, MD
Dr. Vikram Patel, Ph.D.
Kathleen M. Pike, Ph.D.
Wander Reitsma
Dr. Patrick Runnels, MD, MBA
Dr. Shekhar Saxena, MD, FRCPsych, DAB, MRC, Psych
Prof. Oleg Skugarevsky
Guido Valentini, Chair European Clubhouse Coalition
Gwen Zornberg, MS, Sc.D.
Partners in Care Advancement Committee
Dr. Ralph Aquila, MD
Dr. Jeanie Tse, MD
Alexander Baldassare, MFA
Craig Bayer, BA
Dr. Lori D’Angelo, Ph.D
Liza Hinchey, MA
Kinga Jedrzejczak, MA
Judy Meibach, BA
Amber Michon, BA
Cyrus Daniel Napolitano
Dr. Francesca Pernice, Ph.D.
Kevin Rice, MA
