Box 7
Example of Supported Employment for People with Serious Mental Illness
- Program: IPS - Individual Placement and Support
- Goal: To secure employment quickly and efficiently for people with mental illness. An alarming 90% of them are unemployed, yet most wish to be working.
- Features: An IPS employment specialist on a mental health treatment team. The employment specialist collaborates with clinicians to make sure that employment is part of the treatment plan. Then the specialist conducts assessments, rapid job searches, and provides ongoing support while the consumer is on the job.
- Outcomes: In general, 60-80% of those served by IPS obtain at least one competitive job, according to findings from three randomized controlled trials in New Hampshire, Washington, DC, and Baltimore (Drake et al., 1999). Those trials find IPS far superior to traditional programs that include prevocational training. The cost of IPS is no greater than that for traditional programs, suggesting that IPS is cost-effective.
- Biggest Challenge: To move away from traditional partial hospital programs, which are ineffective at achieving employment outcomes yet still reimbursable under Medicaid.
- How Other Organizations Can Adopt: Restructure state and federal programs to pay for evidence-based practices like IPS that help consumers achieve employment goals, rather than pay for ineffective, traditional day treatment programs that are not effective in supporting employment.
- Contact Point: Dr. Robert E. Drake, Dartmouth Medical Center
- Sites: 30 States in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, and 6 European countries
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