Grounded in the presenter's personal and family, as well as professional experience as an early psychosis researcher, this talk will explore the current landscape of client and family-centered practices within CSC, and future directions, with a focus on better supporting clients and families during and following the transition out of CSC.  
Learning objectives:

1. Describe at least two specific client-centered practices in CSC;
2. Describe at least two specific family-centered practices in CSC; and,
3. Articulate specific challenges of the transition out of CSC and impact on clients and their families.

Join the Global Education Center for an interactive Latin Dance Class and Drum Segment. 

Since establishing one of the nation's first rural First Episode Psychosis sites at Carey Counseling Center in Northwest Tennessee, Tennessee has become widely known for its success in implementing early psychosis programming. Over the last six years, that success has been built upon by expanding First Episode Psychosis sites across Tennessee, hiring a Statewide Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator, and implementing a Clinical High Risk for Psychosis program in Memphis. In this panel discussion, staff from each of Tennessee's early psychosis sites (five urban, one rural) will give a look behind the curtain at the incredible work they do, the challenges they’ve faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the creative ways they have adapted.
Learning Objectives:

1. Learn about early psychosis programming in Tennessee by direct service providers, including staff from our five First Episode Psychosis (OnTrackTN) sites and one Clinical High Risk for Psychosis site;

2. Develop a stronger understanding of what it's actually like to work with youth and young adults who are dealing with or are at-risk for psychosis;

3. Examine the challenges and successes of implementing early psychosis programming, as well as continuing services during the pandemic;

4. Identify differences in early psychosis programming in a rural area vs urban area.

Everybody talks to themselves, but not how I do it. Welcome to the life of Michelle Hammer. Listen to Michelle Hammer tell her story of growing up with and surviving Schizophrenia. Michelle talks about when she was 18 and finally realized the paranoia was fake, and all the thoughts in her head were lies. She stresses the importance of a good support team, that she believes is the only reason she made it through college. Misdiagnosis's along the way. Three psych ward stays. And with all of that behind her, she started the company Schizophrenic.NYC Mental Health Clothing Brand to get the public talking about mental health. 

Learning Objectives: 

1. My initial denial, and then realizing I had a mental illness;
2. How I received my correct diagnosis and manage my NYC life; and, 
3. How I started my own business despite what everyone else said and created something amazing.

“BEING AN ART THERAPIST IS WITNESSING THE TRANSFORMATION, STRENGTH AND AWARENESS THAT NATURALLY FLOWS FROM BEING CREATIVE. VISUALIZING ONE’S HEALING AND TRANSLATING IT IN INTO ART REINFORCES HOPE.” – NINA AYALA
 

How Transition Age Youth-Specific Practices Can Enhance Engagement In Your Work

Transition-Age Youth (TAY) represents the developmental stage with the highest prevalence for serious mental health conditions, yet TAY are least likely to engage in mental health services.  In this engaging and interactive presentation, participants will understand the case for creating services specifically dedicated to transition-age youth and young adults, and how TAY-focused services can enhance First Episode programs.  Participants will learn about mixing evidence informed practices, including the TIP Model, youth-centric vocational supports, young adult peer mentorship and other practices that lead to a Discovery-Oriented Care approach in engaging young adults around their priority goals.  Participants will also learn how Thresholds in Illinois built a continuum of multi-disciplinary young adult-based services that mirrors similar initiatives underway in Tennessee.
Learning Objecitves:

1. Understand the rationale for transition age youth-specific mental health services;
2. Learn about the evidence-informed practices that can increase engagement in First Episode Services;
3. Understand how to apply some of these new practices into your multi-disciplinary team-based work; and,
4. Have a little fun!

This workshop emphasizes the importance of using a person-centered, strengths-based approach with individuals and their families during transition planning. The workshop begins with a presentation that provides background on the long-term benefits of CSC and a summary of the research on discharge. We then introduce strategies, such as shared-decision making, and tools, like the OnTrackNY Transition Planning Tool, which can be used with individuals and families to explore their accomplishments during the program, identify their goals for the transition process and life after CSC, identify options for clinical and non-clinical follow-up supports, and create plans for achieving those goals during and after program discharge. The presentation highlights the ways that OnTrackNY programs implement these strategies in real-world settings to empower individuals and their families. Following the presentation, the group will engage in a Q&A to explore processes factors that impact successful transition planning and discharge for the individual, family members and providers.
 
This workshop will provide a general framework for involving participants in discussions and decisions related to transition planning and will be tailored for a diverse audience, including providers, peers, and families. By the end of this workshop, participants will be better prepared to apply this framework in their own personal, professional, and institutional settings to promote enhanced service utilization and advocate for best practices.
Learning Objectives:
During this 50-minute workshop, participants will:

1. become familiar with the research base on long-term outcomes for individuals who participated in time-limited, early intervention services for first episode psychosis;

2. gain a better understanding of how coordinated specialty care (CSC) programs, particularly OnTrackNY, approach transition planning and discharge; and,

3. be exposed to specific strategies and tools that OnTrackNY uses to assess readiness and collaborate on discharge planning with participants and their families so they are better able to navigate the transition and process.

Come learn how Individual Placement and Support (IPS) can improve the health and quality life for young adult with first-episode psychosis. IPS is vocational intervention that have consistently shown to have positive outcomes, and young adults want to complete education and gain employment more than they want to address their mental health symptoms. This session will focus on the adapted IPS model for transition-age youth and its impact on a person’s life who is experiencing symptoms for the first time. The presenter will briefly discuss all 8 principles and provide tips, examples and resources that one can use.
Learning Objectives: 

1. Describe adapted Individual Placement and Support (IPS) Supported Employment;
2. List the benefits of having an Employment and Education Specialist (EES) on a First Episode Psychosis team; and,
3. Discuss ways to help youth experiencing their first psychosis stay in school, find and keep a job.

For these young adults, becoming a mental health advocate helps fuel the flames of their recovery. Times can get tough with balancing wellness, school, work, and a global pandemic, but overcoming obstacles is nothing new for this group of panelists, who all have various lived experiences with psychosis. They’re wise, relatable, and more than ready to show the audience what ignites their passion for working and volunteering in the very field they once received services from.
Learning Objectives:

1. Gain an understanding of the different ways young adults can experience psychosis;

2. Identify effective ways to support young people on their journey of recovery and wellness, as well as how advocacy and leadership can play a role in that; and

3. Learn how the power of peer support can be transformative for young adults with lived experience

This presentation will describe the “clinical high-risk” phase of psychosis, with an emphasis on defining the construct and describing early identification strategies. I will also focus on cultural and contextual considerations in this phase of illness, without which the field of early psychosis runs the risk of further perpetuating mental health disparities.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this session, participants will: 

1. Identify signs of psychosis-risk symptoms;
2. Demonstrate awareness of psychosis-risk screening and assessment strategies, and recognize how attention to cultural and contextual factors inform these strategies; and, 
3. Increase familiarity with approaches to care that can recognize and potentially reduce bias. 

Families can and do play a major role in recovery from a first episode of psychosis, and providing education and support to family members is critical in early psychosis programming. The perspectives of families impacted by psychosis are often not heard, so in this session, you will hear from two Family Support Specialists, including the FSS within Tennessee’s Clinical High Risk for Psychosis program. Both have loved and cared for a family member experiencing symptoms of psychosis, sticking with them through the ups and downs, and choosing to use their voices to help other families along the way. Come hear the power of their stories.
Learning Objectives:

1. Empathize with the ups and downs of caring for a loved one with psychosis;

2. Identify some of the early warning signs that a loved one may be experiencing psychosis and ways to support them; and,

3. Learn about the transition from family peer to family support specialist.

Can regional systems of care be designed to disseminate best practices AND drive necessary research? This is a question of generic interest across health-care conditions, and literature from allied fields will be brought to bear here on how this can be done for psychotic disorders. Knowledge from research and implementations conducted at the Program for Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP, www.step.yale.edu) will be presented along with ongoing initiatives to advance the learning objectives for this session.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session, attendees will understand why 

1. Knowledge Translation should be the organizing goal of systems of care for psychotic disorders; 
2. Population Health can serve as a conceptual basis for such reform, which will be facilitated by a shared vocabulary of “systems, networks, and pathways”; 
3. Measuring Value can guide inevitable trade-offs in regional allocation of resources; 
4. Services should be designed to embrace Complexity and avoid simplistic approaches to ‘Wicked' problems; and, 
5. Learning Health Systems are an optimal framework within which to design systems for knowledge translation.

Unusual perceptual experiences like voice-hearing occur across a wide range of individuals, communities, and cultures. While sometimes associated with psychotic illness, these experiences often occur in the general population, in individuals who may never develop the need to seek psychiatric care. Non-clinical voice-hearers have very similar experiences compared to many voice-hearers who do seek psychiatric care, with the greatest difference being that they functional well despite having these experiences. One aspect that consistently differentiates clinical from non-clinical voice-hearers is the endorsed ability to exert voluntary control over their experiences. However, our own work has demonstrated that individuals’ experience of control is multifaceted, drawing upon neurological, psychological, and social factors that perhaps represent partially independent and differentiable processes. We have developed and validated a new self-report scale meant to capture these dimensions. These efforts have been made possible through the work of a large sample of voice-hearers from various stakeholder groups who have historically endorsed varying degrees of control over their experiences: voice-hearers with a diagnosis of a psychotic-spectrum disorder; clairaudient mediums and other spiritually-oriented voice-hearers; and members of
the Hearing Voices Movement and others in the recovery movement. We have created a consortium of individuals consisting of advocacy groups, people with lived experiences, spiritually oriented communities, and psychiatrists and neuroscientists engaged in a mutually-respectful effort to create a clinical understanding of unusual experiences that is maximally informed by lived experience. Our project, the Yale COPE Project, is an entirely online platform where experts in lived experience across the globe can share their stories and provide valuable data in the form of scales and tasks.
 
Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this activity, participants should be able to:
 

1. To understand that auditory hallucinations occur in populations that vary widely in their need for care;
2. To be able to describe differences in controllability of AVH in clinical and non-clinical populations;
3. To discuss frequency and characteristics of non-clinical vs. clinical voice hearing; and,
4. To share the importance of agency in voice hearing to recovery.

SESSION BONUS ..... 
#RecoveryKickback: A Celebration of Young Adults Living in Recovery
Celebrate young adults living in recovery and showcasing their talents. These young people have a lot to share and are using their voices to highlight what life in recovery actually looks like. There will be rapping, art, music, spoken word, and more. So kick back, relax, and enjoy the show!

1. Understand the scope and types of FEP programs in New York State;
2. Learn about what proportions and types of FEP programs are reimbursable by Medicaid and commercial payers; and,
3. Understand multiple options to enhance and sustain funding for FEP programs.

1. Describe the relationship between cannabis abuse and early psychosis in a developmental context;
2. Weigh the evidence for and against whether cannabis use may cause psychosis;
3. Describe the efficacy of treatments for cannabis abuse in the context of early psychosis; and, 
4. Learn the findings from new studies on cannabidiol as a therapeutic for psychosis.