Mental Health Intake Research Articles

Boston HAPPENS Program: A model of health care for HIV-positive, homeless, and at-risk youth

The Boston HAPPENS [Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) Adolescent Provider and Peer Education Network for Services] Program is a project supported by Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program, HIV/AIDS Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration, which provides a network of care for homeless, at-risk, and HIV-positive youth (ages 12–24 years), involving eight agencies. The program has provided services to 1301 youth, including 46 who are HIV- positive. Boston HAPPENS provides a citywide network of culturally and developmentally appropriate adolescent-specific care, including: (a) outreach and risk-reduction counseling through professional and adult-supervised peer staff, (b) access to appropriate HIV counseling and testing support services, (c) life management counseling (mental health intake and visits as part of health care and at times of crisis), (d) health status screening and services needs assessment, (e) client-focused, comprehensive, multidisciplinary care and support, (f) follow-up and outreach to ensure continuing care, and (g) integrated care and communication among providers in the metropolitan Boston area. This innovative network of youth-specific care offers a continuum from street outreach to referral and HIV specialty care that crosses institutional barriers.

Brief Screening for Lifetime History of Criminal Victimization at Mental Health Intake

This study determined the proportion of new intake clients identified as crime victims at a community mental health center using standard intake methods and using a brief victimization screening questionnaire. Results indicated that by using the screening questionnaire, the proportion of clients identified as physical assault victims nearly doubled, and the proportions of clients identified as sexual assault victims or survivors of homicide victims more than tripled. Brief victimization screening is recommended for all initial intake interviews.

Geophysical variables and behavior: II. Weather factors as predictors of local social indicators of maladaptation in two non-urban areas.

The relative predictive strengths of eight weather factors were examined using as separate dependent variables monthly figures for community mental health intake, welfare caseload, calls to a telephone hotline, medical patient caseload, felony arrests, juvenile complaints, drunk-driving arrests, and mortality rates in two non-urban areas of Ohio. Z-score transformations of subjective discomfort of the weather factors as indicated by three independent samples were analyzed with a stepwise multiple regression. With the exception of hotline calls, each of the social indicators in the two localities was significantly predicted by a different weather factor, and the weather factors, taken together, accounted for about 10% of the variance of each social indicator. For each geographical area, combined weather factors accounted for no more than 30% of the variance of any local social indicator. Problems of overgeneralization and exaggeration of the effects of weather factors on social indicators in previous studies were discussed. A balanced approach to behavioral effects of geophysical variables must be achieved (Ammons, 1978).

Evaluation of a mental health information and referral service.

This paper reports on the application of a method for evaluating public health programs to a mental health intake and referral service of a suburban county of a midwestern state. The method involves measurement of program objectives and subobjectives in order to ascertain program effectiveness. Evaluation provided useful information with regard to the agencies using the service, the flow of patients through the program, and the subsequent flow, through a hospital outpatient clinic, of a majority of patients referred for diagnosis or treatment. The effect of treatment was not included in the evaluation.