Spotlight Research 2 - Behavioral Interventions for Young Adults with Violent Behavior During Early Psychosis: An Overview of Recent Research Developments

Young adults with early psychosis are a subgroup at higher violence risk than the general population; estimates suggest that up to one-third of such individuals engage in violence during the early course of their illness. While the absolute risk of violence is low, young adults with early psychosis who do engage in violence report experiencing significant disruptions to their lives. Current interventions to reduce violence risk are limited in scope despite an increase in funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for studies addressing treatments and prevention strategies related to violence. Young adults with early psychosis are eligible for comprehensive treatment via specialized early intervention services (EIS), but no studies having explored using CBT-based interventions to reduce violence for this population. This “Spotlight Research Presentation” will describe innovative research developing and testing behavioral interventions to assess and treat violence risk for young adults with early psychosis. Dr. Stephanie Rolin, a forensic psychiatrist and mental health services researcher, will highlight international work in this area, as well as her own work in the area of behavioral intervention development, which has been continuously funded by the NIMH since 2019 (L30 MH120711; K23MH126312).

In this talk, Dr. Rolin will describe recent developments regarding the adaptation and testing of a CBT-based intervention called PICASSO (Psychological Intervention for Complex PTSD and Schizophrenia-Spectrum disorder). First developed in the UK, PICASSO is a CBT-based intervention that targets violence, anger and psychosis. In a RCT comparing PICASSO (n=38) to a control condition (n=39), the study found that over the 12-month follow-up, fewer people in the CBT group had been aggressive. In this presentation, Dr. Rolin will describe the PICASSO intervention and then describe her formative research with EIS participants and EIS staff to adapt PICASSO to an EIS setting. Then, she will discuss the results of a recent clinical trial of this intervention (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT05756855). She will conclude the talk by discussing interventional work happening in this area.