Engaging Youth and Families in Mental Health Services: Ideas for Assessment and Intervention

Low treatment engagement is one of the most common obstacles that clinicians encounter. However, addressing engagement challenges is complex for two reasons: (1) engagement concerns are quite varied and might go undetected by clinicians in part due to the lack of ways to measure engagement and the reluctance of youth and families to spontaneously report concerns and (2) although there is a growing evidence base of engagement interventions, it is not well-organized or widely disseminated. This presentation will provide an overview of treatment engagement in youth mental health services, present a multidimensional approach for thinking about engagement, share a free survey that measures youth and caregiver engagement in services, explain how assessment informs strategies for addressing engagement challenges, and describe research findings from the Reaching Families multisite trial. 1 CE credit hour is available free of charge to Weill Cornell Medicine Department of Psychiatry, full time and voluntary psychology, social work and LMHC faculty