Interventions to Promote Mental Health and Prevent Substance Abuse
Best practice and evidence-based interventions to "Promote Mental Health and Prevent Substance Abuse" are organized by focus areas and goals.
- Goal 1: To promote mental, emotional and behavioral (MEB) well-being in communities
- Goal 2.1: Prevent underage drinking, non-medical use of prescription pain relievers drugs by youth, and excessive alcohol consumption by adults
- Goal 2.2: Prevent and reduce occurrence of mental, emotional and behavioral disorders among youth and adults
- Goal 2.3: Prevent suicides among youth and adults.
- Goal2.4: Reduce tobacco use among adults who report poor mental health.
- Goal 3.1: Support collaboration among leaders, professionals and community members working in MEB health promotion, substance abuse and other MEB disorders and chronic disease prevention, treatment and recovery.
- Interventions for Goal 3.2: Strengthen infrastructure for MEB health promotion and MEB disorder prevention.
Interventions for Goal 1: To promote mental, emotional and behavioral (MEB) well-being in communities
- Early Childhood Home Visitation
- Home visitation to prevent violence includes programs in which parents and children are visited in their home by nurses, social workers, paraprofessionals, or community peers. Some visits must occur during the child's first two years of life, but they may be initiated during pregnancy and may continue after the child's second birthday. Home-visiting programs that teach new parents to interact warmly with infants. Home visitors convey information, offer support, and provide training to families.
- Good Behavior Game
- Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a classroom-based behavior management strategy for elementary school that teachers use along with a school's standard instructional curricula. GBG uses a classroom-wide game format with teams and rewards to socialize children to the role of student and reduce aggressive, disruptive classroom behavior, which is a risk factor for adolescent and adult illicit drug abuse, alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking, antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), and violent and criminal behavior. GBG is structured around four core elements: classroom rules, team membership, self- and team-behavior monitoring, and positive reinforcement of individual team members and the team as a whole. More practices can be found in SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Policies (NREPP), an searchable online registry of more than 280 interventions supporting mental health promotion, substance abuse prevention, and mental health and substance abuse treatment.
- Positive Parenting Program (Triple P)
- The Triple P - Positive Parenting Program is a parenting and family support system designed to prevent - as well as treat - behavioural and emotional problems in children and teenagers. It aims to prevent problems in the family, school and community before they arise and to create family environments that encourage children to realise their potential.
- Parent Corps
- ParentCorps is a family-centered, school-based preventive intervention designed to foster healthy development and school success among young children (ages 3-6) living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The program is implemented as a universal intervention (for all children) in early childhood education or childcare settings ("school") as a 14-session weekly series for parents and children and professional development for early childhood educators.
- Evidence-based kernels
- An evidence-based kernel is the smallest unit of proven behavioral influence. Every kernel has experimental studies proving it works. Examples include: asking students to complete a specific task to "beat the timer" to facilitate positive discipline or eating diets rich in "omega-3" fatty acids found in fish, grass-fed livestock, some nuts, some green leafy vegetables to reduce aggression.
- Preventing poverty
- Implement strategies in communities that target poverty as a risk factor for MEB health disorders. Such strategies include, school-based interventions targeting social-emotional learning processes and delivered by teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools clearly document their positive impact on low-income children's social-behavioral problems and psychological distress; approaches to poverty reduction such as tax policy-based earning supplements have shown some promising evidence of success in affecting certain domains of MEB health, such as reduced antisocial behavior.
Interventions for Goal 2.1: Prevent underage drinking, non-medical use of prescription pain relievers drugs by youth, and excessive alcohol consumption by adults
- Life Skills Training
- LifeSkills Training (LST) is a school-based program that aims to prevent alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use and violence by targeting the major social and psychological factors that promote the initiation of substance use and other risky behaviors.
- Too Good for Drugs
- Too Good for Drugs (TGFD) is a school-based prevention program for kindergarten through 12th grade that builds on students' resiliency by teaching them how to be socially competent and autonomous problem solvers. The program is designed to benefit everyone in the school by providing needed education in social and emotional competencies and by reducing risk factors and building protective factors that affect students in these age groups. TGFD focuses on developing personal and interpersonal skills to resist peer pressures, goal setting, decisionmaking, bonding with others, having respect for self and others, managing emotions, effective communication, and social interactions.
- Project towards No Drug Abuse
- Project Towards No Drug Abuse (Project TND) is a drug use prevention program for high school youth. The current version of the curriculum is designed to help students develop self-control and communication skills, acquire resources that help them resist drug use, improve decisionmaking strategies, and develop the motivation to not use drugs. It is packaged in 12 40-minute interactive sessions to be taught by teachers or health educators. The TND curriculum was developed for high-risk students in continuation or alternative high schools. It has also been tested among traditional high school students.
- Project Success:
- Project SUCCESS (Schools Using Coordinated Community Efforts to Strengthen Students) is designed to prevent and reduce substance use among students 12 to 18 years of age. The intervention includes four components: The Prevention Education Series (PES), an eight-session alcohol, tobacco, and other drug program; Schoolwide activities and promotional materials to increase positively change social norms about substance use, and increase enforcement of school policies; a parent program that includes informational meetings, parent education, and the formation of a parent advisory committee,; and individual and group counseling.
- Project ASSERT and SBIRT
- Project ASSERT (Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services, Education, and Referral to Treatment) is a screening, brief 15-minute intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) model designed for use in health clinics or emergency departments (EDs). Adolescents, young adults, and adults visiting a participating health clinic or ED for medical care are screened for substance use by Project ASSERT interventionists--peer educators or ED staff members who have been trained to deliver the intervention. Patients with a positive screening result are engaged by interventionists with the Brief Negotiated Interview (BNI), a semiscripted, motivational interviewing counseling session.
- Teen Intervene
- Teen Intervene is a brief, early intervention program for 12- to 19-year-olds who display the early stages of alcohol or drug involvement. Integrating stages of change theory, motivational enhancement, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, the intervention aims to help teens reduce and ultimately eliminate their substance use. The program is typically administered in an outpatient, school, or juvenile detention setting by a trained professional in three 1-hour sessions conducted 10 days apart.
Interventions for Goal 2.2: Prevent and reduce occurrence of mental, emotional and behavioral disorders among youth and adults.
- Prevention of child maltreatment by promoting family wellness, home visiting and comprehensive early childhood programs such as Early Childhood Home Visitation, a home visitation to prevent violence includes programs in which parents and children are visited in their home by nurses, social workers, paraprofessionals, or community peers. Some visits must occur during the child's first two years of life, but they may be initiated during pregnancy and may continue after the child's second birthday.Home-visiting programs that teach new parents to interact warmly with infants. Home visitors convey information, offer support, and provide training to families.
- Academic achievement by incorporating school-based social and emotional learning programs.
- Violence prevention by incorporating school-based programs that reduce aggressive behaviors.
- Use evidence-based programs to encourage good conduct:
- Good Behavior Game: Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a classroom-based behavior management strategy for elementary school that teachers use along with a school's standard instructional curricula. GBG uses a classroom-wide game format with teams and rewards to socialize children to the role of student and reduce aggressive, disruptive classroom behavior, which is a risk factor for adolescent and adult illicit drug abuse, alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking, antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), and violent and criminal behavior. GBG is structured around four core elements: classroom rules, team membership, self- and team-behavior monitoring, and positive reinforcement of individual team members and the team as a whole. More practices can be found in SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Policies (NREPP), an searchable online registry of more than 280 interventions supporting mental health promotion, substance abuse prevention, and mental health and substance abuse treatment.
- Linking Interests of Families and Teachers (LIFT): Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers (LIFT) is an intervention designed to prevent the development of aggressive and antisocial behaviors in children within the elementary school setting (particularly first graders and fifth graders).
- Preventing Depression: Meta-analyses have found that interventions to prevent depression both reduce the incidence of depression in adolescents and reduce symptoms among children and youth. For children at heightened risk, one of the promising interventions is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), an approach that significantly reduced major depressive episodes.
- Sources of Strength: Sources of Strength, a universal suicide prevention program, is designed to build socioecological protective influences among youth to reduce the likelihood that vulnerable high school students will become suicidal. The program trains students as peer leaders and connects them with adult advisors at school and in the community.
- Life Skills Training (Elem. and MS: LifeSkills Training (LST) is a school-based program that aims to prevent alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use and violence by targeting the major social and psychological factors that promote the initiation of substance use and other risky behaviors. Facilitated discussion, structured small group activities, and role-playing scenarios are used to stimulate participation and promote the acquisition of skills.
- Too Good for Drugs: Too Good for Drugs (TGFD) is a school-based prevention program for kindergarten through 12th grade that builds on students' resiliency by teaching them how to be socially competent and autonomous problem solvers. The program is designed to benefit everyone in the school by providing needed education in social and emotional competencies and by reducing risk factors and building protective factors that affect students in these age groups. TGFD focuses on developing personal and interpersonal skills to resist peer pressures, goal setting, decisionmaking, bonding with others, having respect for self and others, managing emotions, effective communication, and social interactions.
- Reducing Multiple Disorders: The Seattle Social Development project, a quasi-experimental combined parent-teacher training intervention, significantly reduced multiple diagnosable mental health disorders (major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, social phobia).
- Reducing Anxiety:Two interventions, one selective done with from an early intervention program involving a 6-session parent-education program and one indicated 10-week school-based child- and parent-focused psychosocial intervention have shown promising results in reducing anxiety among young children.
- Trauma-informed care: Reduce the health impact of violence and trauma by integrating trauma-informed care throughout health, behavioral health and related systems.
- Access to screening for MIEB disorders: Support access to screening for MEB disorders.
Interventions for Goal 2.3: Prevent suicides among youth and adults.
- Collaborate with State and local government agencies, health care insurers, clinicians, businesses and educational institutions to integrate, implement and coordinate suicide prevention initiatives.
- Advocate for increasing MEB disorder screening of in primary care settings of adolescents and adults at risk.
- Collaborate to increase knowledge among the general public, health care providers and school personnel of the warning signs for suicide and how to connect individuals to assistance and care.
- Promote policies that reduce access to lethal means of suicide among individuals with identified suicide risk.
Interventions for Goal 2.4: Reduce tobacco use among adults who report poor mental health.
- Adopt tobacco-free regulations in all mental health facilities, as substance-abuse facilities have done.
- Assess the feasibility of expanding the Medicaid benefit for smoking cessation services such as medication for four 90-day courses of treatment a year for individuals with MEB disorders. Individuals with MEB disorders likely benefit from a longer duration of treatment.
- Identify and support interventions to address disparities in smoking rates for those with poor mental health.
- Support and strengthen licensing requirement to include improved screening and treatment of tobacco dependence by mental health providers as is already implemented by substance abuse providers.
- Expand efforts with DOH Tobacco Control Program and OMH Personalized Recovery Oriented Services Program (PROS) throughout New York State.
Interventions for Goal 3.1: Support collaboration among leaders, professionals and community members working in MEB health promotion, substance abuse and other MEB disorders and chronic disease prevention, treatment and recovery.
- Identify key leaders among State agencies, municipalities and community organization to form an interdisciplinary implementation team whose responsibilities are to prioritize needs related to data, training, technical assistance, and evidence-based practices that are necessary to promote MEB health and prevent MEB disorders.
- IMPACT--Collaborative Care for MEB Disorders in Primary Care --a team approach that integrates depression treatment into primary care and other medical settings. This model of care was tested in a randomized control trial in 8 health care systems across five states. Results from the study show that Collaborative Care is more than twice as effective as usual care for depression. It also improves physical and social functioning and patients' quality of life while reducing overall health care costs over a four-year follow-up.
- Educate communities about the 911 Good Samaritan is New York's Fatal Overdose Prevention Law that encourages people to call for help during a drug or alcohol overdose without fear of criminal prosecution.
- Identify model prevention interventions and lessons in integrating prevention and treatment.
Interventions for Goal 3.2: Strengthen infrastructure for MEB health promotion and MEB disorder prevention.
- Convene an Implementation Team to advance the promotion of health prevention of MEB disorders.
- Identify a delegate from the Health Reform initiative to serve on the Implementation Team.
- Expand efforts with DOH and OMH to implement 'Collaborative Care' in primary care settings throughout NYS.
- Members of the Team will:
- Identify model prevention interventions and lessons in integrating prevention and treatment.
- Identify opportunities to collect State and local data on the impact of mental health and substance abuse issues, including but not limited to racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic health equity.
- Identify opportunities to collaborate on cost-benefit studies.
- Identify impact of existing policies and programs on vulnerable populations.
Note: The Prevention Agenda 2013-2017 has been extended to 2018 to align its timeline with other state and federal health care reform initiatives.
