Symptom targeted intervention
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Symptom targeted intervention (STI) is a clinical program being used in medical settings to help patients who struggle with symptoms of depression or anxiety or adherence to treatment plans but who are not interested in receiving outpatient mental health treatment. STI is an individualized therapeutic model and clinical program that teaches patients brief, effective ways to cope with difficult thoughts, feelings, and behaviors using evidence-based interventions. Its individualized engagement process employs techniques from solution-focused therapy, using a Rogerian, patient-centered philosophy. This engagement process ensures that even challenging, at-risk, and non-adherent patients are able to participate.
Social workers and other mental health practitioners and medical professionals use STI to assist patients with a number of specific concerns, from sleep and stress to pain management, relationships and mood management. STI's coping tools are cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness interventions that have been condensed and modified to make them user friendly and effective in brief sessions. After meeting with the clinician, the patient takes charge, performing interventions at home through assignments that extend and reinforce learning.
Using STI, the clinician helps the patient identify the most problematic symptom of the depression (such as depressed mood, insomnia, anxiety, rumination, irritability, negative thinking, social isolation), then together the clinician and patient address that symptom using STI's evidence-based selection of brief cognitive, behavioral, and mindfulness techniques. The emphasis is on keeping interactions brief since mental health treatment in the primary care setting is typically time limited[1]—although the Collaborative Care and Integrated Care models provides hope for improved and expanded mental health services in the primary care setting.[2]
As patients learn better coping skills, they become more engaged with their treatment and more adherent to doctors’ recommendations.
STI also gives social workers ways to uncover their clinical strengths and tools to continue to work with resistant patients. With STI training, clinicians learn a nuanced approach to all patients, even those who resist help, since often those are the individuals who need help most. After learning STI, clinicians report that they are more likely to approach rather than avoid difficult patient situations.