By Sian Wilkerson

Virginia Commonwealth University psychology professor Bryce D. McLeod has received a $1.8 million federal grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to assess and optimize a treatment practice related to youth mental health.

Measurement-based care uses repeated measurements to track a patient’s progress and inform treatment decisions. McLeod, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychology in VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences, said MBC is considered an evidence-based clinical practice for treating mental health issues in youths, but “poor fidelity – the extent to which clinicians deliver the core practices of measurement-based care – decreases its public health impact for youth and their families.”

McLeod and collaborator Amanda Jensen-Doss, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Miami, were awarded the four-year grant to support their MBC research. The division is part of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Their project aims to pinpoint ways to optimize the effectiveness of mental health care, with the long-term goal of determining how best to train mental health clinicians to deliver MBC.

Using existing data from the Community Study of Outcome Monitoring for Emotional Disorders in Teens – a randomized effectiveness trial comparing two MBC conditions – McLeod and Jensen-Doss will define and evaluate the continuum of MBC fidelity domains; assess the impact of MBC fidelity on target mechanisms and youth clinical outcomes; and evaluate the utility of pragmatic MBC fidelity indicators (such as self-report and digital usage data).

The project dovetails with others conducted by McLeod’s CREATE Lab, which engages in research focused on improving the effectiveness and sustainment of evidence-based practices delivered in community settings for youth experiencing mental health problems.