The NAVIGATE Program for First-Episode Psychosis: Rationale, Overview, and Description of Psychosocial Components

Comprehensive coordinated specialty care programs for first episode psychosis have been widely implemented in other countries, but not in the U.S. The National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) Recovery After Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) initiative focused on the development and evaluation of first episode treatment programs designed for the U.S. healthcare system. This paper describes the background, rationale, and nature of the intervention developed by the Early Treatment Program project, the NAVIGATE program, with a particular focus on its psychosocial components. NAVIGATE is a team-based, multi-component treatment program designed to be implemented in routine mental health treatment settings and aimed at guiding people with a first episode of psychosis (and their families) towards psychological and functional health. The core services provided in the NAVIGATE program include the Family Education Program, Individual Resiliency Training, Supported Employment and Education, and Individualized Medication Treatment. NAVIGATE embraces a shared decision-making approach with a focus on strengths and resiliency, and collaboration with clients and family members in treatment planning and reviews. The NAVIGATE program has the potential to fill an important gap in the U.S. healthcare system by providing a comprehensive intervention specially designed to meet the unique treatment needs of persons recovering from a first episode of psychosis. The program is currently being evaluated in cluster randomized controlled trial comparing NAVIGATE to usual community care

Inter-rater variability as mutual disagreement: identifying raters' divergent points of view

Whenever multiple observers provide ratings, even of the same performance, inter-rater variation is prevalent. The resulting 'idiosyncratic rater variance' is considered to be unusable error of measurement in psychometric models and is a threat to the defensibility of our assessments. Prior studies of inter-rater variation in clinical assessments have used open response formats to gather raters' comments and justifications. This design choice allows participants to use idiosyncratic response styles that could result in a distorted representation of the underlying rater cognition and skew subsequent analyses. In this study we explored rater variability using the structured response format of Q methodology. Physician raters viewed video-recorded clinical performances and provided Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX) assessment ratings through a web-based system. They then shared their assessment impressions by sorting statements that described the most salient aspects of the clinical performance onto a forced quasi-normal distribution ranging from "most consistent with my impression" to "most contrary to my impression". Analysis of the resulting Q-sorts revealed distinct points of view for each performance shared by multiple physicians. The points of view corresponded with the ratings physicians assigned to the performance. Each point of view emphasized different aspects of the performance with either rapport-building and/or medical expertise skills being most salient. It was rare for the points of view to diverge based on disagreements regarding the interpretation of a specific aspect of the performance. As a result, physicians' divergent points of view on a given clinical performance cannot be easily reconciled into a single coherent assessment judgment that is impacted by measurement error. If inter-rater variability does not wholly reflect error of measurement, it is problematic for our current measurement models and poses challenges for how we are to adequately analyze performance assessment ratings

1Support for this research from the Carlsberg Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We thank John

We evaluate voter motivations using both small and large electorates with a diverse subject pool via two virtual laboratory experiments. We find little support for selfish instrumental turnout; that is, abstention does not increase with electorate size and voters who are in the minority abstain more than those in the majority. Nevertheless, the majority vote for the candidate who maximizes their payoffs. These results combined suggests that selfish consumption motivations explain their behavior. A smaller significant number of voters make ethical choices. However, we also find a significant minority of voters appears to engage in bandwagon voting, which offsets the possible moral bias in electoral outcomes from ethical voting. Moreover, the percentage of ethical voting is unrelated to electorate size, so although we find a slight moral bias in electoral outcomes, it does not increase in electorate size. One of the riddles in the academic literature on voting is the basic question of why people vote. The paradox of not voting posits that in large elections the probability of one vote affecting the outcome is relatively small, almost zero, so that if there is a cost to voting, then that cost will outweigh the investment or instrumental benefits which depend on the probability of being pivotal

Perceived autonomy support in the NIMH RAISE early treatment program

Objective: This study examined perceived support for autonomy—the extent to which individuals feel empowered and supported to make informed choices—among participants in the Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode Early Treatment Program (RAISE ETP). The aims of this study were to evaluate whether NAVIGATE, the active treatment studied in RAISE ETP, was associated with greater improvements in perceived autonomy support over the two-year intervention, compared with community care, and to examine associations between perceived autonomy support and quality of life and symptoms over time and across treatment groups. Methods: This study examined perceived autonomy support among the 404 individuals with first-episode psychosis who participated in the RAISE ETP trial (NAVIGATE, N=223; community care, N=181). Three-level conditional linear growth modeling was used given the nested data structure. Results: The results indicated that perceived autonomy support increased significantly over time for those in NAVIGATE but not in community care. Once treatment began, higher perceived autonomy support was related to higher quality of life at six, 12, and 18 months in NAVIGATE and at 12, 18, and 24 months in community care. Higher perceived autonomy support was related to improved scores on total symptoms and on excited symptoms regardless of treatment group and time. Conclusions: Overall, perceived autonomy support increased in NAVIGATE but not for those in community care and was related to improved quality of life and symptoms across both treatment groups. Future research should examine the impact of perceived autonomy support on a wider array of outcomes, including engagement, medication adherence, and functioning