Yale Department of Psychiatry residents Caylan Bookman, MD, and Julio Nunes, MD, and faculty Ruby Lekwauwa, MD, and Eunice Yuen, MD, PhD, published a peer-reviewed article “Novel CHATogether family-centered mental health care in the post-pandemic era: A pilot care and evaluation” in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health.
Three years ago, Compassionate Home, Action Together (CHATogether) was founded as a community initiative in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. CHATogether is now implemented into a family-centered treatment to meet the unmet critical needs in the post-pandemic youth mental health crisis.
CHATogether’s innovation stems from multi-faceted family-centered care delivery model including elements in psychodynamic psychotherapy, drama therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy.
This study presents CHATogether as a novel family-centered intervention to address family mental health stress, especially when a family system was disrupted and negatively affected the mental health of children and adolescents. The intervention facilitated positive child-parent communication on a variety of topics, through tools such as emotional expression and help-seeking behavior.
The paper suggested a promising potential to use this intervention in youth mental health.