The holiday season is a time for reflecting on the past year and anticipating the new year. Looking back, we are grateful for all those who have helped to keep us on track and have made Project SUCCESS succeed. First and foremost, we thank those who agreed to join a group at one of our sites and see if the experience would help with social and community engagement. We also thank the clinicians who provided either Cognitive Enhancement Therapy (CET) or Social Skills Training (SST/HOPES) and the Principal Investigators who managed the project at the participating sites, as well as the site Research Assistants who helped with engagement and assessment. Special thanks to the stakeholders who advised us, to our stakeholder consultant, Dr. Jon Delman, and to our stakeholder activity organizer, Diane Beckman. Words cannot express our gratitude to our exceptional Clinical Trials Specialist and project director, Matt Killam, and to our other key project staff, including Michael Rejtig, Caitlin Bryant, Laura Golden, and Tracy Reed. We also are thankful for the unflagging support of Blanche Spindell at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical and to our Department of Psychiatry’s leadership, including Bill Greenberg and Sandi Leitao. Finally, we are grateful to have as collaborators each member of our co-investigator team.
Going forward, project treatments will be finished at all our service sites by the end of January, but our team will continue to assess participants through July 2025. We will write our final report this summer and look forward to sharing results after that. We expect that what we learn will help to improve service opportunities and quality of life for persons confronting the challenges of serious mental illness.
Happy holidays,
Russ and Kesh
Russell K. Schutt, PhD and Matcheri S. Keshavan, MD
Dual Principal Investigators
Project SUCCESS