Currently, in the State of Michigan, a system-wide transformation effort is happening that will have an impact on every consumer of publically-funded mental health services.  After 30 years of clinical research, we now have Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) that serve as best-practice guidelines for providing clinical treatment for certain forms of mental illness.  At Genesee County Community Mental Health, we have begun to take significant action to make the following EBPs available:

• Family Psychoeducation for the treatment of Schizophrenia
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a multi-faceted treatment program that focuses on skills development and mindfulness to reduce self-harm behaviors.
• Multisystemic Therapy (MST), an intensive, short-term model that helps adolescents avoid incarceration or other out-of-home placement
• Assertive Community Treatment to assist in the treatment of severe mental illness and co-occurring disorders of mental illness and substance use disorder
• Integrated Treatment for Persons with Co-Occurring Disorders or Dual Diagnosis (COD/IDDT) recognizes that over 50% of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or other severe mood disorder, and about one-third of people with anxiety and depression, have a substance use disorder at some time in their life. Implementation of COD/IDDT protocols leads to improved outcomes including reduced hospital stays, reduced symptoms, reduced violence and legal problems, and better physical health and improved relationships with family members.  
• Motivational Interviewing / Motivational Enhancement protocols to achieve better results in our welcoming efforts and in engaging people in treatment
• Illness Management and Recovery offers everyone the opportunity to completely rethink what’s possible to achieve with one’s life when pursuing Recovery in their lifestyle choices

The thing to remember about evidence-based practices is that their use is validated by some form of documented scientific evidence. When we say "evidence", we mean that research shows that there are advantages to using EBPs that other forms of treatment do not have. To make EBPs more available, each EBP advanced in the State of Michigan is published in a manual format that has all of the information needed to provide the EBP in different settings.  Each EBP also has a clearly defined Fidelity Index to better direct us in the application of each one's "active ingredients."

As practitioners, we can continue to operate on the basis of clinical intuition guided by past practice (though clinical research has shown some forms of "therapy as usual" are statistically no more effecitve than "no treatment"), or we can provide treatment on the basis of WADITW or DITWLY (we always did it that way/did it that way last year).  In the hope of providing the best treatment, we can recognize that having the ability to provide services anchored in evidence-based practices means the promise of the best clinical outcomes for our consumers whose only hope for recovery may be evidence-based treatment.

Consumers of mental health services along with their natural supports, friends, and family members will also find this information helpful in making decisions about which form of treatment offers the most hope and best chance for recovery from the effects of mental illness or substance-use disorder.