People in recovery from serious mental illness are often excluded from making decisions about their own mental health care, frequently resulting in poor alliances with their care providers. While the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act addresses this issue by requiring programs to be person-centered and recovery-oriented, providers often struggle to identify concrete ways to change their practices. Person-Centered Recovery Planning (PCRP) is an evidence-based approach to collaborative service planning among an individual, the treatment team, and supports. PCRP maximizes client choice and ownership in the treatment process in order to achieve recovery goals. Dissemination of PCRP in the mental health field has been gradual, and training opportunities are limited. As a result, many people with mental illness continue to experience low self-efficacy in participating in their treatment planning. Recovery Roadmap: A Collaborative Multimedia Tool for Person-Centered Recovery Planning is a highly interactive web-based tool that provides guidance for providers and people in recovery, and promotes widespread implementation of PCRP. The Recovery Roadmap prototype was developed and tested by the Center for Social Innovation (C4), in partnership with Yale University's Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH), under a Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (1R43MH100712). The interactive web-based tool consists of two modules: one for service providers and one for clients. The provider module presents didactic information and exercises to help providers gain the necessary knowledge and skills to implement PCRP. The client module helps people in recovery engage in their care by identifying priorities and life goals, as well as gaining skills in advocating for themselves and driving their own care. Response to the Roadmap was overwhelmingly positive; providers and clients noted concrete changes in the treatment planning process. Providers and clients reported statistically significant improvements on the Person-Centered Care Questionnaire (PCCQ), a measure of PCRP implementation. Phase II will refine the prototype Roadmap to streamline content, provide additional handouts and exercises for providers and clients to complete together, expand the audio/video vignettes and case studies, and add interactive online coaching and support for providers. Phase II also involves a robust evaluation of the Roadmap, using a quasi-experimental design in a fully powered trial. Approximately 25 community-based mental health programs will be randomized into Recovery Roadmap (RR) or Treatment as Usual (TAU) conditions. A total of 230 providers will be recruited (RR n=115; TAU n=115). Each provider will recruit two clients to participate (RR n=230; TAU n=230). Data will include one pre-test and three post-tests with providers and clients, interviews with providers and administrators, network analytics, and administrative client data. This phase will culminate with the dissemination of findings and preparation for Phase III commercialization.
Research demonstrates that Person-Centered Recovery Planning (PCRP) empowers an individual in the treatment process, improves their ability to manage their mental health conditions, and also leads to improved physical and psychological health. Recovery Roadmap: A Collaborative Multimedia Tool for Person- Centered Recovery Planning addresses the need for person-centered and recovery-oriented care by: 1) expanding development of Recovery Roadmap, an interactive, web-based tool on PCRP for service providers and people in recovery; 2) evaluating the Recovery Roadmap using a quasi-experimental design in a fully- powered trial; and 3) disseminating findings and preparing for commercialization. This comprehensive tool will provide broad dissemination of PCRP and, in turn, improve the lives of people experiencing mental illness.
