How to help young adults with mental health conditions and trouble with the law go to school or work

What is it about?

Young adults who have mental health conditions and get in trouble with the law struggle to finish school and launch an adult work life. This study compared two kinds of school and work supports for this population. In the first kind of support, coaches were embedded in a clinical team that specializes in this population, and worked with these young people in their homes and out in the community, to explore, develop, and support their school and work goals. In the second kind of support, young people who received treatment from the same specialty clinical team were referred to the state's vocational rehabilitation agency, that provides school and work supports for people with disabilities. This paper compared how well each of these kinds of supports for school and work worked.

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Why is it important?

Our findings showed that it is more likely that using embedded vocational coaches than state vocational rehabilitation services will help this population engage in school or work , when they are working with a specialty clinical team like the one in the study. This is important because the specialty clinical team, called Multisystemic Therapy for Emerging Adults, is the only clinical team that has some research-based evidence that it helps this population reduce their criminal behavior and their mental health symptoms. It is important to understand how to best connect them to better success in school and work as well.

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