By Ann Nicholson
August 24, 2001
Curtis McMillen, Ph.D., associate professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work (GWB), has received a four-year, $1.3 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to document potentially dramatic changes in mental-health services for 380 Missouri youths leaving foster care over the next several years.
"The study will examine what happens to adolescents who are heavy mental-health service users once they leave foster care and are no longer eligible for child service systems," McMillen said. "The mental-health service system changes considerably as youths move from adolescence to adulthood. There are fewer service options for adults, eligibility narrows and affordability changes.
"These service system changes occur at a time of considerable stress as young people --particularly those in foster care --often change residences, seek new employment and learn to live more independently," he added.
The study will involve personal interviews with the adolescents in foster care just prior to their 17th birthday, tracking them quarterly through phone interviews and then re-interviewing them in person two years later.
In addition to documenting changes in and access to mental-health services, the study will examine correlations between continued or discontinued service use and various outcomes. These outcomes include positive occurrences such as high school graduation or college acceptance, and negative situations such as homelessness, unemployment, incarceration, unplanned parenthood, substance abuse and psychiatric hospitalizations.
The Missouri Division of Family Services is a partner in the research, which is being conducted through GWB's Center for Mental Health Services Research. Wendy Auslander, Ph.D., associate professor of social work, and Wilson Compton III, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, are serving as investigators on the project.
"By identifying resources, bar-riers and characteristics related to the change in mental-health service use for youths leaving the foster care system, we hope our study will lead to better outcomes for these young adults," McMillen said.
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