Georgia Beck Initiative

The Beck Initiative is a collaborative clinical, educational, and administrative partnership between the Aaron T. Beck Psychopathology Research Center of the University of Pennsylvania, the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD), and the Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health to implement recovery-oriented Cognitive Therapy (CT-R) training and consultation throughout the DBHDD care network. CT-R is a collaborative treatment approach that prioritizes attainment of patient-directed goals, engages withdrawn patients in their own psychiatric rehabilitation, and provides tangible tools to help remove roadblocks to recovery of people with severe mental illness.

Through intensive workshops and ongoing consultation, the Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health at the Georgia Health Policy Center, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania and DBHDD, is providing ongoing training to disseminate CT-R to behavioral health providers throughout the state. The training consists of an interactive five-day workshop focused on understanding the CT-R model. Providers then participate in a six-month consultation period where trainees are provided detailed feedback on how to implement the CT-R protocol with specific, challenging patients from their caseload. Additionally, the training process includes web-based consultations, site visits, and evaluation of audio recordings of actual therapy sessions. Competency is measured by the Cognitive Therapy Rating Scale.

Providers from state hospitals, day treatment and outpatient clinics, Intensive Case Management groups, as well as Assertive Community Treatment and Community Support teams have participated in the training. In addition to implementing the annual training plan, the Center of Excellence is providing ongoing evaluation to assess fidelity of providers to the model, treatment impact, and long-term sustainability of CT-R in Georgia.