The Peabody Treatment Progress Battery: History and Methods for Developing a Comprehensive Measurement Battery for Youth Mental Health

Abstract

There is increased need for comprehensive, flexible, and evidence-based approaches to measuring the process and outcomes of youth mental health treatment. This paper introduces a special issue dedicated to the Peabody Treatment Progress Battery (PTPB), a battery of measures created to meet this need. The PTPB is an integrated set of brief, reliable, and valid instruments that can be administered efficiently at low cost and can provide systematic feedback for use in treatment planning. It includes eleven measures completed by youth, caregivers, and/or clinicians that assess clinically-relevant constructs such as symptom severity, therapeutic alliance, life satisfaction, motivation for treatment, hope, treatment expectations, caregivers strain, and service satisfaction. This introductory article describes the rationale for the PTPB, its’ development and evaluation, detailing the specific analytic approaches utilized by the different papers in the special issue and a description of the study and sample from which the participants were taken.

Validation and use of the Children’s Hope Scale-Revised PTPB Edition (CHS-PTPB): High Initial Youth Hope and Elevated Baseline Symptomatology Predict Poor Treatment Outcomes

“…The sample for the longitudinal analyses included only youth included in the evaluation sample (i.e., they began treatment after the implementation of CFS TM ), which resulted in a sample of 356 youths receiving mental health treatment. For a more detailed description of the samples used to conduct the psychometric and longitudinal analyses, please see Riemer et al (2012) in the current issue.…”

Validation and Use of the Youth and Caregiver Treatment Outcome Expectations Scale (TOES) to Assess the Relationships Between Expectations, Pretreatment Characteristics, and Outcomes

“…Additionally, no differences were found in terms of length of treatment or number of treatment sessions. For a more detailed description of the samples used to conduct the psychometric and longitudinal analyses, please see Riemer et al (2012) in this issue.…”

“…Additional analyses were conducted to aide in score interpretation including TOES Total Score quartiles and standard error of measurements SEM. For a more detailed description of the psychometric procedures used in developing the second edition of the PTPB, please see Riemer et al (2012) in this issue.…”

Open Trial and Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of a Novel Program to Reduce Perceived Burdensomeness

“…It has demonstrated a satisfactory degree of internal consistency and evidence of excellent convergent validity Reimer et al, 2012). No parents who were contacted failed to provide consent for their children to participate.…”

“…The fifth item provides participants' with an opportunity to provide open-ended feedback. The SSS was developed as part of the Peabody Treatment Progress Battery, which takes a systematic approach to comprehensive measurement of treatment outcomes and satisfaction in youth mental health services (Reimer et al, 2012).…”