Michael Constantino and Team Receive NIH Grant for Web-based Mental Healthcare App
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As the mental health crisis worsens in the United States, countless people seek treatment to manage and improve their psychological well-being. With growing demand for mental healthcare services, therapists’ waitlists are especially long, making it notably challenging to find a therapist. As another challenge, therapists vary in how effectively they treat certain problems, which leaves patients vulnerable to a poor match.
Michael Constantino, a professor in the College of Natural Science's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and his team developed a web-based application to combat both of these problems. The team’s application, Express Access, conveniently connects mental healthcare patients with therapists who are best matched for them. This tool allows patients to identify and select multiple clinicians, for in-person therapy or e-therapy, based on the clinician’s historical effectiveness in treating the patients’ relevant problems (e.g., depression, substance misuse). To test the efficacy of this match service, the team received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their related proposal, entitled “Consumer-Therapist-Connector: Increasing Access to Quality Behavioral Healthcare.”
“With this tool, patients have at their fingertips the ability to select a therapist who is more likely to help them, has a reasonable wait time, and possesses other valued characteristics, such as gender identity,” said Constantino.
With Express Access, participating therapists’ strengths are assessed by analyzing outcomes data from past patients with various types of problems. After completing an initial assessment to determine their main concerns, a new patient will see a shortlist of well-matched therapists. On this same dashboard, they will also see wait times, appointment options, therapist characteristics, etc. After filtering to their own preferences, patients can add themselves to multiple therapists’ waitlists at once without having to make multiple phone calls or visits—and they can accept the first appointment offered.
The effectiveness of Express Access will be determined by the time it takes patients to initiate treatment and how much reduction they have in their symptoms and functioning after treatment.
If successful, Express Access would open the door for increased accessibility and improved quality of care based on the scientific matching of mental health care patients to therapists.
According to Constantino, “Good matches in psychotherapy are often left to chance, both because of access restrictions and therapists being poor judges of their own strengths and weaknesses. Data-informed matching can significantly improve both the access and outcomes problems, without disrupting the types of interventions therapists choose to use.”
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44MH132156. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.