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 1995-2000
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Women Mental Health Consumers and their Children: A Multi-Site Study

Staff:

Judith A. Cook, Ph.D., Susan Pickett, Ph.D., and Pamela Steigman, M.A.

Purpose:

The Women Mental Health Consumers and their Children Multi-Site Outcome Study is designed to examine the psychosocial treatment outcomes of mothers with severe mental illness and their children, who are receiving mental health and rehabilitation services in programs serving mothers and children together around the country. Such programs are extremely rare and many people are not aware of them.  One stellar example is the Parenting Options Project, located in Worcester, MA.  The focus is on women mental health consumers' parenting experiences, the effects of their disability upon their children, and their service delivery needs.  An advisory council of well-known experts in the area of mothers with psychiatric disability and their young children, incliding two consumer mothers, meets to periodically provide feedback about the project, discuss data analysis issues, and to provide guidance for future directions of the project.

Based on feedback from the project's Advisory Board and site participants, the study was redesigned from an interview study to a case file extraction study.  The study methodology now uses a case file extraction protocol with features modeled after several found in the published research literature.  This was done to achieve the largest possible sample size at the most economical cost.

Participation agreements have been secured by 4 sites that offer a full array of clinical and rehabilitation services to both mothers and children, serving women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.  Of the 4 participating sites, one is located in Chicago, one in rural New York, one in New York City, and another in Washington DC. 

Research assistants from each site completed a 3 day training on case record extraction in January 2000.  Data collection is underway and is expected to be completed in September 2000. 

Products:

Protocol Related Materials:
Presentation and Research Materials:

You can view the above products and publications by downloading the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software from the Adobe Web site.  Click on the image below.
Link to Free Adobe Acrobat Reader

For more information regarding this project, please email Pam Steigman, M.A. or Judith Cook, Ph.D.  or phone them at (312) 413-3162 . 

Advisory Board

Lenore Weissmann, Ph.D.   Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. 

Carol Mowbray, Ph.D.   Laura Miller, M.D.

Joanne Nicholson, Ph.D.   Linda Landfair

Anne Whitman, Ph.D.

Participating Service Delivery Sites

Parent Infant Program, NY, NY
Invisible Children's Project, Goshen, NY
The Center for Mental Health, Washington, DC
Thresholds' Mothers Project, Chicago, IL
 

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