75 - Crisis Care and Lives Lived of Behavioral Health Consumers at Risk for Suicide.

Abstract Information: Program evaluation findings facilitate decision-making about program improvement, chronicle continuity of services, and can weave together a compelling story about the lives lived of mental health consumers. The accurate portrayal of program evaluation findings in narrative form is critical, resulting in the adoption of methodologies, designs, and programmatic adaptations that fit the context surrounding behavioral health. A mixed methods approach was used to evaluate Centerstone’s Community Mental Health Center (C-CMHC), to tell meaningful stories about lives lived, and to document the courageous lives of consumers at risk for suicide. This poster presentation shares lessons learned about using qualitative methods to evaluate community mental health programs, and to give life and context to data reporting. The use of qualitative methodologies including the collection of powerful client testimonials allowed the evaluators to describe the program's performance to stakeholders including SAMHSA, clinicians, and to program leadership. By drawing patterns in the qualitative data, evaluators were able to tell stories about the experiences of consumers in treatment. Using stories, testimonials, and quantitative markers, results revealed that the C-CMHC program positively impacted clients’ symptoms and quality of life.

Relevance Statement: The client quotes and testimonials, which constitute the bulk of the qualitative evaluation data, are reported monthly in a CMHC program summary dashboard, are included in SAMHSA reports, and are used in evaluation summaries for clinical leadership. Client quotes are generated from interviewing mental health consumers at risk for suicide. Interview responses are analyzed using thematic coding to arrive at program summaries, with a particular focus on mental health symptomology and overall functioning. Qualitative evaluation findings are combined with quantitative metrics, to describe implementation challenges and outcomes of CMHC services across more than 30 counties. Moreover, the testimonials and quotations aid clinicians in reflecting on the efficacy of clinical services and to continually improve programmatic adaptations. Ultimately, collecting qualitative data and reporting out evaluative findings in a narrative format, facilitates continuous program improvement and highlights lives fully lived. The stories generated from the C-CMHC interview responses (quotations and testimonials) provide an emotional description of the program beneficiaries' experience in their own words. This choice to collect, analyze, and report out narrative data affected the evaluators’ evaluation choices with respect to: 1) data triangulation and 2) data presentation. Concerning data triangulation, mental health consumers experiencing a behavioral health crisis are highly vulnerable and reactive, making it difficult to rely solely on their questionnaire responses. Therefore, the evaluators came to accept that a mixed methods design was the golden approach with our mental health consumers, as it made it possible to triangulate the qualitative and the quantitative data to facilitate programmatic decision-making. Secondly, presenting the evaluative findings of the program to the stakeholders in a narrative or storytelling format helps stakeholders and clinical leaders to assess the program's personal impact. The use of powerful qualitative data from client interviews, made it possible for the evaluators to tell stories about the C-CMHC beneficiaries' experience using their own words.