This program is for youth who are 9 to 17 years old and are at-risk for out-of-home placement due to serious behavior problems and mental health symptoms and their families.

Multisystemic Therapy: Psychiatric Care (MST-Psych), a community-based program, is designed to improve family relationships and reduce participants' mental health symptoms and suicidal behaviors while allowing youth to spend more time in their natural environments rather than in institutional settings.

A randomized clinical trial comparing MST-Psych to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization found significant declines for youth in both groups in youth-reported depressive affect, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation and in parent-reported youth internalizing (i.e., anxiety, depression), externalizing (i.e., behavior problems), and self-harm behavior. A treatment effect indicated that there was a significantly greater reduction in youth-reported suicide attempts for youth in MST-Psychiatric compared to youth in the hospitalization condition.  These effects were maintained 16 months post-baseline.

MST-Psych, an adaptation of MST*, is designed for youth who have significant functional impairment from problems such as depression, suicidal ideation/attempts, homicidal ideation/attempts, and psychosis. Teams of treatment providers, including a doctoral-level supervisor, master's-level therapists, a psychiatrist, and a crisis caseworker work with youth and their families in their natural environments.  Providers use interventions, such as family therapy, behavioral parent training, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and medications.

MST goals include the following:

• Provide parents/caregivers with skills and resources to monitor and communicate with their children in a positive manner;
• Assist parents/caregivers in engaging their youth in prosocial activities while removing them from peers with deviant behavior; and
• Address barriers to effective parenting (e.g., parent substance abuse).

Specific strategies are used to minimize the risk of harm among suicidal youth that include developing a safety plan with the family, eliminating means of committing suicide, and helping responsible adults in the youth's environment provide supervision and structure to reduce suicide risk.

*A separate fact sheet is available for MST, and this program has been placed as Effective on the Clearinghouse's Continuum of Evidence.

MST-Psych was developed in the mid-1990s and has been implemented with more than 350 families at service organizations in Florida, New York, Ohio, and Oregon and in Ontario, Canada.

MST-Psych is delivered by master's level clinicians. New MST therapists, supervisors, and additional staff are required to attend a 5-day MST orientation training and a 2-day MST-Psych orientation training. Ongoing training occurs through weekly telephone consultation and quarterly on-site booster trainings. Please use details in the Contact section to learn more.

Considerations for implementing this program include ensuring therapists and staff have suitable background credentials and complete training, obtaining funding for program costs, acquiring buy-in from participants and their families, developing and maintaining a treatment team, and understanding this intensive intervention requires small caseloads and frequent interaction with youth and their families.

The Clearinghouse can help address these considerations. Please call 1-877-382-9185 or email Clearinghouse@psu.edu

If you are interested in implementing MST-Psych, the Clearinghouse is interested in helping you!
Please call 1-877-382-9185 or email Clearinghouse@psu.edu

MST-Psych is implemented over a period of 4 to 6 months and includes frequent contact with treatment providers.  A treatment team member is on call at all times.

Annual program support and service fees, including license fees, manuals, training materials, case consultation, booster training, and use of web-based services, cost approximately $96,500 per site plus travel expenses.

To move MST-Psych to the Effective category on the Clearinghouse Continuum of Evidence, the effects described above must be replicated with a representative sample by a research team independent of the program developers.

The Clearinghouse can help you develop an evaluation plan to ensure the program components are meeting your goals. Please call 1-877-382-9185 or email Clearinghouse@psu.edu

Contact the Clearinghouse with any questions regarding this program.
Phone: 1-877-382-9185 Email: Clearinghouse@psu.edu

You may also contact MST Services by mail 4 Carriage Lane, Suite 102, Charleston, SC 29407, phone 1-843-856-8226, email info@mstservices.com, or visit https://www.mstservices.com/contact-us

https://www.mstservices.com/mst-psych, https://www.sprc.org/resources-programs/multisystemic-therapy-psychiatric-supports-mst-psychiatric and Huey et al. (2004)