Motivational interviewing training for community mental health providers: Findings and lessons learned from three related studies.

Purpose: This study aimed to test innovative Motivational Interviewing (MI) training strategies: remote workshop and avatar conversation simulations among community mental health staff. Innovation: Researchers provided an engaging, interactive tool for learning and practicing MI to a variety of real-world practitioners and compared two methods for measuring skills: automated scoring from avatar simulations and coded interviews using the validated Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity (MITI) tool. Methods: Attitudes, beliefs, and MI skills of 127 practitioners implementing three distinct research projects were examined: ACHIEVE-D (weight loss); IMPACT (tobacco smoking cessation); and RHYTHM (CVD risk reduction). Results: 95% of participants believed MI was important to learn; 88% completed the workshop; 64% used the avatar-based training. Practice improvements were modest and inconsistent over time across the three projects. While underutilized, 47 participants (75%) who tried the avatar training at least once felt that it helped develop their skills. Conclusions: Community mental health practitioners value learning MI. Their engagement with the asynchronous avatar training resources was insufficient and did not meaningfully improve their observed MI skills. Although a novel feature of the avatar-based training, the automated conversation scoring appeared to overestimate performance for all MI metrics relative to MITI scores at the same time points.