Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a multidisciplinary, team-based model that provides intensive community-based and outreach-oriented services to people who experience the most severe and persistent mental illness. The vast majority also have a co-occurring substance use disorder and many experience comorbid medical illnesses as well as homelessness. This is a vulnerable population and their providers – ACT teams – are at elevated risk themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtual Meetings

The Northwest MHTTC is partnering with the Institute for Best Practices at the University of North Carolina to host and facilitate regular meetings for ACT teams and ACT stakeholders.

Goals of the meetings are to:

• connect with one other
• share strategies and resources for adapting team practices and communications   
• facilitate connection to the most up-to-date resources during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Virtual Discussion Forum

In addition to the meet-up, we have also created a Virtual Discussion Forum to help organize information, resources, and strategies used across teams. You can participate in the forum as a guest, or sign up as a member. Within the Discussion Forum are specific board topics:

• Support for ACT Service Recipients;
• Support for ACT Team Staff;
• Info and Updates: Federal Sources;
• Info and Updates: State and Local Sources; ACT Fidelity and COVID-19 Pandemic; and Words of Encouragement.
• Click on a board of interest to read existing threads, react to threads, or post new threads.
• Recordings of prior meetings are also posted at this forum.

Guest Speaker

On June 15, our guest speaker will be John Torous, MD, presenting "Evaluating digital technologies and mobile apps for people with serious mental illness." Dr. Torous is a clinical psychiatrist and researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. His research focuses on smartphone apps and schizophrenia, and he runs a digital clinic where he use mobile technologies to augment to care for his patients. He is the web editor for JAMA Psychiatry and clinical adviser to SMI Adviser, a joint initiative with SAMHSA and the American Psychiatric Association. 
 

For more information or questions, contact:

Maria Monroe-Devita, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine; Co-Director of the Northwest MHTTC; and Director, Washington State Center of Excellence in First Episode Psychosis.

Lorna Moser, PhD, Director of the UNC ACT Technical Assistance Center in the UNC Department of Psychiatry’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health; and Coordinator of the North Carolina ACT Coalition.