NYS Office of Mental Health & NYS Psychiatric Institute Establish Center to Promote Best Practices

ALBANY, NY (06/19/2008)(readMedia)-- The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) at Columbia University Medical Center, today announced the development of an Evidence-Based Practice Technical Assistance Center (EBP-TAC) to build upon OMH's plan to promote the widespread availability of evidence-based practices to improve mental health services, insure accountability, and promote recovery-oriented outcomes for consumers and families.

The Center, which will be housed within NYSPI's Division of Mental Health Services and Policy Research, will serve as a key resource to OMH and New York State's public mental health system by spreading those practices identified as being most critical to accomplishing system-transformation initiatives. The partnership with NYSPI provides unequalled access to expertise that will assist providers in developing the infrastructure and expertise needed to offer consumers and their families services that have strong evidence of success in achieving recovery.

OMH Commissioner Michael F. Hogan, Ph.D., said, "The Evidence-Based Practice Technical Assistance Center will help lead to better service outcomes for New Yorkers with a mental illness. We know that with appropriate treatment and supports, recovery from mental illness is possible. We also know that there are treatments and interventions that have been documented by scientific research to be effective, but oftentimes they are not being provided to individuals with mental illness. The Evidence-Based Practice Technical Assistance Center will work to bridge that gap by helping to bring treatments that work to the people that need them."

Susan Essock, Ph.D., Director of the Division of Mental Services and Policy Research, and Sharon Aungst, M.S., the Center's Associate Director, have been charged with seeing through its primary functions, namely: building awareness, partnership, and consensus; assisting provider agencies in making organizational changes; supporting leadership to implement and sustain change; developing clinical staff and supervisory competency; promoting culturally relevant adaptations; and evaluating consumer and organizational outcomes, and intervention and implementation fidelity.

Already, EBP-TAC has begun assisting OMH in implementation of Wellness Self Management, designed to promote and sustain wellness self management services for adults with serious mental health problems. Wellness self management is a curriculum- based practice that expands upon the Illness Management and Recovery practice, one of the nationally recognized evidence-based practices developed in recent years. The program assists consumers in their recovery and results in a fundamental change in agencies' understanding and support of recovery-oriented services.

"The New York State Psychiatric Institute is proud to provide leadership support to the Office of Mental Health and the evidence-based practice technical assistance center," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "This wonderful initiative will improve the quality and effectiveness of mental health services for thousands of citizens across the state. The new EBP-TAC will bring the latest knowledge from our science to help patients achieve recovery."