It has long been an accepted tenet of professional development and ethical treatment that clinicians are required to remain aware of current research and trends. Most codes of ethics direct the professional to a duty to ensure that their clients receive the optimum treatment based on well-researched practices. Most early psychosis programs have from the outset placed a strong emphasis on the need for research and accountability. Standardized documentation, assessment tools and clinical guidelines have helped to ground practice towards a proactive and outcome-oriented approach.
With early psychosis, a broad range of skills and knowledge is necessary to provide optimal care. It is the responsibility of all of us working with this population to evaluate our own skill areas and identify areas where we could benefit from further learning or training.
Accessing the resources to help us further our own education is easier than ever with the amount of materials that are available to us online.
For activity one, you are asked to peruse some of the online web resources listed below.
A number of select links are provided below. Spend some time perusing these and the resources that they offer. This act of casually looking over these type of sites can sometimes lead to an interesting discovery and may prompt you to then want to learn more about a certain topic.
Web Links
Schizophrenia.com – there is a very impressive collection of videos and audio files here (over 120) – some of which relate specifically to first-episode schizophrenia. This site is definitely worth checking out. http://www.schizophrenia.com/video/
rygen National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health ( Formerly EPPIC), Australia – Resources and Training – lists a number of resources specific to youth mental health and early psychosis. The general website is found here, and you will find several client fact sheets here.
Early Intervention in Psychiatry (IEPA’s Journal) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17517893
International Early Psychosis Association (IEPA) Melbourne, Australia – check out the resources for EP workers http://www.iepa.org.au
American Psychological Association – list of manuals for empirically validated treatments http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dgthomas/txmanul.html
BehaveNet – DSM-5 Guidebook: Essential Companion to the DSM https://behavenet.com/search?keys=DSM-5+Guidebook%3A+The+Essential+Companion+to+the+Diagnostic+and+Statistical+Manual+of+Mental+Disorders+
(* on BehaveNet, one may search mental health issues, and the search returns movies featuring mental health topics)
Open topics – to find academic journal articles, search “Google Scholar” followed by your question. Alternately, if you are looking for academic sources from Canada only, for example, before your search terms type “site:ac:” followed by the country code
Happy Searching!