Policy, Program, & Other Supports

An Emotional Support Animal (ESA) is an animal that provides therapeutic benefit (e.g., emotional support, comfort, companionship) to a person with a mental health or psychiatric disability (such as a serious mental health condition). An ESA is not considered a Service Animal, but under U.S. law, an emotional support animal is also not considered a pet and is generally not restricted by the type of animal^{.1, 2} Any domesticated animal may be considered as an ESA (e.g., cats, dogs, mice, rabbits, birds, hedgehogs, rats, minipigs, ferrets, etc.) and they can be any age. However, an ESA must be able to be manageable in public and does not create a nuisance. In this tip sheet we describe what an Emotional Support Animal is an is not as well as how someone can look into getting one.

Do you know that you can take your Emotional Support Animal (ESA) with you to college? Find out more about bringing your ESA to college with you in this tip sheet.

A Family Safety Plan is a tool created collaboratively with your loved one with lived experience of mental health condition(s), family members, medical staff and friends. It’s your “playbook” of the best ways to minimize or divert a mental health crisis. 

In the wake of COVID-19, that tried and true saying of “putting on your mask first before helping others” takes on a whole new meaning and it applies even more. We asked our Family Advisory Board members to provide thoughts on how they adapted their self-care strategies and to share tips on supporting their loved ones with mental health conditions in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This tip sheet was developed as a collaboration between the Massachusetts Statewide Youth Advisory Council (SYAC) and the Learning and Working Center at the Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research (TACR) to clear up some common misunderstandings about mental health conditions and to share strategies to talk about mental health in a more accurate and more helpful way! Read on to learn more about mental health.

We know that young adults often under-utilize services for serious mental health conditions. But, young adults can be actively engaged and retained in services that are important to them by using the right approach. This tip sheet offers providers some guiding principles for working with young adults that can improve engagement and retention in services.

Young adult advisory councils are groups of likeminded young adults who come together on a consistent basis to share resources and advise organizations on how to better serve and support young people. This tip sheet, which is based on direct experiences from young adult council members across the United States, provides a list of Do’s and Don’ts for your organization to consider when developing and running a young adult council.

This tip sheet will walk you through ten steps of developing a young adult mental health advisory council. Young adult advisory councils are groups of likeminded young adults who come together on a consistent basis to share resources and advise organizations on how to better serve and support young people. 

This Research in the Works is about a new trial awarded by NIMH called Effectiveness Trial of Treatment to Reduce Serious Antisocial Behavior in Emerging Adults with Mental Illness. This study builds on Drs. Davis and Sheidow’s previous work and is a randomized controlled trial comparing outcomes of 240 participants assigned to either the MST-EA intervention or enhanced treatment as usual.

This Research in the Works product describes the Transitions RTC’s Transition-Age Youth Psychotherapy Experiences (TYPE) Study. The goal of the TYPE study is to better understand 1) TAY-specific factors that contribute to treatment attrition or retention; and 2) the degree to which adult retention interventions apply to TAY.