Targeting Cognition and Motivation in Coordinated Specialty Care for Early Psychosis: A Grant Report

In this grant report, we describe our project to expand measurement-based psychiatric care across 6 early psychosis treatment teams in Minnesota, and to provide a neuroscience-informed cognitive training and motivation enhancement program for individuals with early psychosis. This project is part of the NIMH Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) initiative which seeks to link data from treatment centers nationally that offer evidence-based specialty care to persons experiencing early psychosis. Systematic analyses of pooled data collected in EPINET will help inform methods for early psychosis care, psychosis risk factors, and pre-emptive interventions. As part of the national EPINET, our hub (Early Psychosis Intervention-Minnesota, EPI-MINN), will: (1) provide measurement-based care in coordinated specialty care programs for early psychosis, (2) determine whether a structured feedback report provides benefit to stakeholders—service users, family members, and primary clinicians, and (3) explore whether deficits in cognition and motivated behavior—two domains that significantly impact functioning and overall quality of life in early psychosis—can be addressed as key treatment goals by implementing a 12-week mobile intervention. Using a regression discontinuity design, participants will be randomized to the cognitive training and motivational enhancement intervention or to treatment as usual. The intervention consists of neuroscience-informed, computerized auditory and social cognitive training exercises, as well as a mobile app where participants interact with each other and with a motivational coach. Participants will complete assessments at 4 time points: baseline and post-intervention (i.e., at 6 months), and again at 12 and 18 months to test the long-term effects of the intervention. All assessments and interventions in this project can be completed entirely remotely.