Peer Leadership in Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) Services: From Program Development to Outcome Evaluation

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Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) specialty services are exploding around the U.S. following the recent 5 percent Mental Health Block Grant set-aside for early intervention services. While many EIP programs include (or plan to include) some element of peer support and/or family support, questions remain as to how to ensure meaningful peer involvement that significantly impacts services.

In this webinar, the presenters discussed both the real-world challenges of robust peer involvement and the potential for such involvement to transform – rather than merely augment – services across the domains of planning, service delivery, policy, and evaluation. The webinar also covered strategies and insights from the Hearing Voices Movement and similar approaches. It explored the meaning of young people’s experiences and the impact of such experiences on vocational and social identity.

The presenters:

• Nev Jones, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and a community psychologist by training. Her work focuses on the phenomenology of voices, early intervention, and the sociocultural determinants of recovery following a first break. She is involved in multiple national initiatives related to the 5 percent set-aside, and is herself an alumna of an EIP service. 

• Irene Hurford, MD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, and the program director for the Psychosis Education, Assessment, Care, and Empowerment (PEACE) program at Horizon House. Previously she led the Severe Mental Illness Treatment Team at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. Her clinical and research work focuses on cognition in schizophrenia, treatment of early episode psychosis, and functional and quality of life improvements in young people with psychosis. 

• Berta Britz, MSW, is a certified peer specialist at Creating Increased Connections through Education and Support (CIC) in Montgomery County, Pa. She is strongly committed to promoting acceptance of the experience of hearing voices; and her ministry, “Hearing Voices and Healing,” is supported by the Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. She helped develop and now coordinates the Montgomery County Hearing Voices Network, which offers systems and community education and eight Taking Back Our Power Hearing Voices self-help/peer support groups, two of which are designed specifically for young people. Her commitment to developing different responses to early anomalous, or “psychotic,” experiences stems from her lived experience. 

• Christa Burkett, technical assistance coordinator of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse, will facilitate.