Competitive Revision for Improving Access and Treatment for Co-occurring Opioid Use Disorders and Mental Illness

People with OUD co-occurring with depression or PTSD (COD) may not seek out treatment for their substance use or mental health issues, but they do visit their primary care provider. However, because providers generally lack specialized training in substance use and mental illness and are focused on the immediate reason for the visit, patients' substance use and mental disorders often go unrecognized and untreated. This missed opportunity can have lethal consequences. Individuals with COD are at higher risk of dying from suicide or overdose than individuals with mental illness or OUD alone. The parent study (NCT04559893) will provide a definitive answer as to whether collaborative care (CC) improves access, quality, and outcomes of care for individuals with COD. While a primary goal is to improve access to and retention in medication treatment for OUD (MOUD) (which is linked to decreased mortality and overdose risk), the interventions CC-COD supports do not proactively address suicide or overdose risk, an important limitation. In addition, CC-COD does not include families in the patient's care. The investigators address these limitations and tackle the public health crisis of increasing deaths from suicide and overdose with this study. Because family members can play an important role in a patient's decision to engage with treatment and in overdose and suicide prevention, the study team investigates family members' views and use this information to strengthen CC-COD. This revision will develop and then test the incremental effectiveness of three additional CC-COD components. Care coordinators will (1) educate family members about MOUD with the goal of increasing patient retention in treatment; (2) train family members and the patient to administer naloxone and on how to reduce overdose risk behaviors; and (3) implement Caring Contacts, a suicide prevention intervention that sends compassionate mailed or text messages to individuals to decrease social isolation and reduce suicide risk.