The UNC School of Social Work will be partnering with the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health in a new three year, NIMH grant funded study to help to design and test a new CBT-focused intervention that, if successful, could make a larger impact by targeting individuals with serious mental illness before they ever become involved in the criminal justice system. The project involves a randomized control trial to test the preliminary effectiveness of the new intervention and to identify strategies to scale up and expand the intervention into community mental health settings across the country… read more here.
The project is lead by UNC SSW Associate Professor Amy Wilson, a national expert in the development and testing of interventions for people with serious mental illness within the criminal justice system. She will be assisted by a team of co-investigators of national prominence with expertise in mental illness, intervention design, and psychological services: Robert Morgan, dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an international expert on correctional psychology and Natalie Bonfine, associate professor of psychiatry at Northeast Ohio Medical University and a long-time collaborator on this work.
Wilson is especially proud of the School of Social Work alumni who make up the team. Caroline Ginley, MSW ’09, has worked on previous studies with social work faculty and is serving as a co-investigator. Anna Parisi, Ph.D. ’21, a long-time practitioner who has collaborated with Wilson on a previous intervention, is serving as a consultant. Rounding out the team are additional experts from within the School, including Research Professor Kirsten Kainz, whose professional interests focus on intervention research and Project Manager Jamie Swaine, MSW ’05, who has collaborated with Wilson on previous research.
Original story posted by UNC School of Social Work on January 11, 2023.