New and Ongoing Users

Abstract

There is growing recognition that to maximize service impacts, first-time users of community mental health services require treatment approaches different from those for experienced users. This study examines differences between new and ongoing service users in their sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, how episodes of the treatment status (new vs. ongoing) interact with problem severity and the level of functioning at the baseline and three-month follow-up; and the role of the service quantity, satisfaction, and hopefulness in predicting service outcomes for children. The results of mixed factorial ANOVAs reveal significant interactions between new/ongoing treatment conditions and problem severity as well as functioning across time periods. New users showed higher problem severity at the baseline than at T2 in comparison with ongoing users. In addition, new users showed lower functioning scores at the baseline than at T2 in comparison with ongoing users. Hopefulness predicted problem severity for new and ongoing users, and service satisfaction predicted problem severity only for ongoing users. In terms of functional outcomes, gender, diagnosis, the number of providers, and hopefulness were predictors for new users, and hopefulness was a predictor for ongoing users. The results suggest a need for using different treatment approaches for new versus ongoing users.