Building Community Awareness for Individuals Suffering from SPMI: The Community Awareness Psychoeducation (CAPE) Intervention

Family group psychoeducation has been found to reduce relapse rates and increased functioning for persons with SPMI (Leff, 1989; Leff, et al., 1990; McFarlane, et al., 1995a; 1995b; Zhang and Yao, 1993; Zhang, et al., 1998). By providing education, modeling behaviors, and treatment, participants are able to increase their understanding of risk and protective factors, to promote their own, and others' recovery, and to address the barriers caused by their illness which keeps them from integrating knowledge and their treatment. Community Awareness through Psychoeducation (CAPE), a psychoeducational group intervention that focuses on improving outcomes for participants, specifically decreased loneliness, increased functioning in everyday activities, and increased perception of functioning and coping, was piloted at two community sites in New York City. The CAPE groups include 12 sessions with each session covering a proscribed psychoeducational curriculum which is focused on topics related to SPMI, with an emphasis on stress and coping, hope and resilience, and building self and community awareness as well as individual and community supports. Using an experimental design, we assigned 40 participants to either a CAPE group or a waitlist for a future group. Findings show that the intervention improved participants' treatment outcomes at post-test, as measured by a reduction in social isolation, an increased ability to adhere to treatment plans and to meet treatment goals, and a reduction in substance use. Formative data indicated that consumer participants were increasingly able to support, network, and communicate with one another as they attended the psychoeducational group sessions.