Objective
- To establish a Reinforced Concerted Action in public mental health addressing the "needs of emerging dependency groups" through observational study activities;
- To standardise psychiatric rehabilitation protocols for the training and evaluation of relapse prevention interventions in therapeutic community (TC) i.e. residential treatment programmes;
- To compile a European database.
The specific needs of emerging dependency groups relates to a dynamic development across European public mental health systems with an increasing prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses characterising emerging dependency groups with substance-related, pathological gambling and sexual disorder. These groups are often misdiagnosed or even undiagnosed. There exists a need for standardised protocols across Europe in order to improve the quality of research and services now in a state of fragmentation. This need has been recognised in several Europeanwide initiatives : EC-COST A6,Eramus Programme on Student Mobility and European Collaborating Centres in Addiction Studies. The RC objective will be accomplished by fusing relevant components of these networks into a new network resource. Targeted training of TC staff will be provided.
Research tasks are organised in two phases : 1) development of a multifunctional methodology for standardising and protocoling differential psychiatric diagnosis and the effectivity of treatment service assessment based upon a new battery instruments constructed from existing psychiatric systems; 2) conduct of staff training and observational pilot studies leading to a multicentre field trial of a minimal and enhanced personalised relapse prevention intervention. The training and research protocol will be initiated in a core group of European TC programmes as a demonstration activity of psychiatric rehabilitation methodology. The psychiatric rehabilitation protocol will provide a prototype for application to other diagnostic groups with a public mental health relevance. An European database will be constructed from the data compiled during the project.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CON - Coordination of research actionsCoordinator
6200 MD Maastricht
Netherlands