Early Intervention in Psychosis services improves outcomes for young people with psychosis, but 25% disengage in the first 12 months with costs to their mental health. To refine a toolkit and training and evaluate effectiveness, implementation, and cost-effectiveness of the Early Youth Engagement-2 intervention to reduce disengagement. Cluster randomised controlled trial with economic and process evaluation. Randomisation at team level stratified by site. Research assistants, outcome assessors and statisticians were masked to treatment allocation for the primary disengagement and cost-effectiveness outcomes. Participants and teams administering the interventions were unmasked. Twenty Early Intervention in Psychosis teams in five sites across England. A total of 1027 young people (14-35 years) with first-episode psychosis (F20-29, 31; ICD-10); 20-282 Early Intervention in Psychosis staff. Team-based motivational engagement (Early Youth Engagement-2) intervention, delivered by Early Intervention in Psychosis clinicians alongside standardised Early Intervention in Psychosis, supported by the implementation toolkit (training, website and booklet series). Standardised Early Intervention in Psychosis, including National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines approved interventions. Primary outcome - time to disengagement over 26 months (days from date of allocation to care co-ordinator to date of last contact following refusal to engage with service, or lack of response to contact for consecutive 3-month period). Secondary outcomes - mental health, recovery, quality of life, service use, at 6 and 12 months. Economic outcomes - National Health Service mental healthcare costs, wider societal care costs, clinical and social outcomes over 12 months; cost-effectiveness. Process evaluation outcomes - fidelity to the Early Youth Engagement-2 model, implementation process scores, therapeutic alliance, qualitative outcomes. Disengagement was 16% across both arms. The multivariable Cox regression on 1005 participants estimated an adjusted hazard ratio for Early Youth Engagement-2 + standardised Early Intervention in Psychosis (n = 652) versus standardised Early Intervention in Psychosis service alone (n = 375) of 1.07 (95% confidence interval 0.76 to 1.49; p = 0.713). There were no observed differences between arms for any secondary outcomes. The health economic evaluation indicated lower mean mental healthcare costs of -£788 (95% CI -£3571 to £1994) and marginally improved mental health states for intervention participants. Early Youth Engagement-2 participants spent 30 more days per year in education and training (95% CI 1.52 to 53.68; probability positive outcome for the intervention: 99%), but these outcomes must be viewed very cautiously as only 22% of the sample provided data. The process evaluation revealed heterogeneous implementation fidelity and constant pressure to adapt to widespread disruption from COVID-19. There was no effect on therapeutic alliance: the most likely active change mechanism was through psychoeducation. Lower than expected disengagement, high loss to follow-up and impact of COVID-19 on fidelity, implementation and outcomes. In the primary clinical effectiveness analysis, 95% confidence limits ruled out a reduction of more than 24% in the risk of disengagement with the Early Youth Engagement-2 intervention. In a cost-effectiveness analysis, estimates fell in the direction of dominance of the Early Youth Engagement-2 intervention (reduced costs, marginally better mental health states). Dissemination of the booklet and website resources and an adapted version of the model as stand-alone tools for use in good-practice routine Early Intervention in Psychosis care. This study is registered as ISRCTN 51629746. This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme (NIHR award ref: 16/31/87) and is published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 13, No. 33. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.
Greenwood et al. (Mon,) studied this question.