Faculty member Antoine Bailliard, PhD, OTR/L, is a research fellow for the Community Outcomes Research and Evaluation Center and a consultant and trainer for the Institute for Best Practices within UNC’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health (CECMH). In this role, Antoine provides technical assistance and trainings to assertive community treatment teams across the nation to enhance their capacity to provide independent living skills trainings for community-dwelling adults with serious mental illness.In collaboration with community partners, Antoine is developing two evaluation tools to facilitate a deep and nuanced understanding of ACT consumers’ functional independence in activities of daily living.Antoine’s goal is twofold — first and foremost: to optimize the participation and quality of life of adults with serious mental illness, and second: to do so specifically through OT, thereby highlighting the profession’s utility in the field of community-based mental health. In his capacity as a research fellow, Antoine has convened a multidisciplinary team (including social work, psychology, rehabilitation counseling) to develop a SAMHSA intervention grant aimed to connect individuals with serious mental illness who are homeless to:
(1) stable housing,
(2) psychosocial rehabilitation enhanced with occupational therapy, and
(3) enrollment in mainstream social services.