What is HYPE?
HYPE (Helping Youth on the Path to Employment) is a manual-based intervention to support transition-aged youth and young adults with mental health conditions to develop their careers. Our goal is to deliver state-of-the-art supported education services, designed to help young adults achieve their goals in work and school, in order to gain competitive employment in the primary labor market which will enable them to live meaningful and economically self-sufficient lives. HYPE is based on the values and practices of the Individualized Placement and Support (IPS) approach to Supported Employment (SE) as well as Supported Education (SEd). HYPEmodernizes services by prioritizing education early in a young adult’s career.
What is Supported Education?
HYPE’s supported education approach (SEd) is an intentional coaching model provided to young adults with mental health conditions who are interested in returning to and completing their education. SEd is designed to maximize performance, increase persistence, and minimize the number of disruptions students experience. HYPE achieves this goal by developing critical skills, connecting to valuable resources, and educating students on helpful accommodations and assistive technology. Education is a critical vocational step that is often required in order to achieve economic self-sufficiency and long-term, personally meaningful careers.
Why HYPE is Needed
HYPE (see Activities that Informed HYPE) is designed to address the profound underemployment and unemployment of transition age youth and young adults by designing supports and strategies to help successfully launch them into lifelong career trajectories. Transition age youth and young adults are preparing to enter the labor force and are often at the critical juncture between leaving secondary education and the early steps of building a career path.
HYPE is designed to support young adults, 18-30 years old, who have mental health conditions that get in the way of a meaningful life. Our integrated model of employment and education services addresses the career development needs of this group.
Education Statistics
Students with mental health conditions often struggle at every level of 
education. Over 50% of students with mental health conditions over the age of 14 end up dropping out of high school, making mental health conditions the disability group with the highest dropout rate. About 40% of the general young adult population goes on to attend college, but that number is only 7-26% for young adults with mental health conditions. Students with mental health conditions have high dropout rates from college (86%) and low graduation rates in comparison to their peers1. Although the statistics show young adults with mental health conditions experience additional barriers, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics graph (shown) demonstrates how important education can be in protecting youth from unemployment and poverty.
The Importance of Developing Skills
HYPE develops Executive Functioning skills
Executive Functioning is at the foundation of HYPE, offering skills and strategies necessary to meet the often competing demands of work and school. Skills such as prioritizing tasks, time management, memorizing information, stamina, and organization are key to a students’ ability to effectively and actively engage and manage their learning. HYPE supports the teaching of executive functioning skills, through the use of a manualized intervention. HYPE focuses ondeveloping these compensatory strategies through coaching, instruction, and practice. The HYPE cognitive training component focuses on developing skills in four domains:
- prospective memory (i.e., remembering to remember)
- attention and vigilance
- learning and memory
- problem solving
HYPE’s Commitment to Skill Development
HYPE develops essential skills that assure success
HYPE services focus on developing and refining skills so that young adults can master critical skills and use them when needed across different roles and environments. Skills that cut across both educational and employment environments include clarifying assignments, managing time, completing assignments on time, preparing for exams or meetings, responding to feedback, managing internal distractions, and negotiating with employers or professors. HYPE provides detailed assessments and guides for practitioners to help young adults to develop such skills.
HYPE develops Executive Functioning skills
Executive Functioning is at the foundation of HYPE, offering skills and strategies necessary to meet the often competing demands of work and school.
Students in college have the equivalent of several bosses, each with their own full set of expectations students are challenged to meet. These students are often also working while school. Skills such as prioritizing tasks, time management, memorizing information, stamina, and organization are key to a students’ ability to effectively and actively engage and manage their learning. Young adults need support to learn how to develop plans and think through complex problems, executive functioning skills that are key to overall cognitive development and success in school and work.
HYPE supports the teaching of executive functioning skills, through the use of a manualized intervention - the Focused Skills and Strategies Training, or FSST. HYPE focuses on developing these compensatory strategies through coaching, instruction, and practice. FSST is a compensatory cognitive remediation curriculum developed to systematically teach executive functioning skills and promote self-regulated learning and academic self-management in order to enhance academic and work performance. FSST teaches skills in the following four domains:
- Prospective Memory (i.e., remembering to remember)
- Attention and Vigilance
- Learning and Memory
- Problem-solving
HYPE practitioners work diligently with young adults to develop these skills, supported by a manualized curriculum that offers instructions for the practitioner and engaging activities and content for the student.,. Taught over the course of twelve weeks, FSST provides young adults with mental health conditions pursuing school and work opportunities with the skills, strategies, and tools to improve important aspects of executive functioning. FSST was developed from cognitive remediation literature and an existing intervention (Twamley et al., 2012), as well as initial research on FSST shows promising results.
FSST is an essential part of HYPE, and provides students with skill instruction, engaging practice opportunities, and home exercises to build habitual practice in the skills that best support academic and employment success.
For more on engaging youth and young adults in skill development through FSST, contact us!