Multisystemic Therapy

MST provides intensive home-based services to lower-income families with youth who have behavioral health issues.  Our MST team assists families that have been referred to us by the City's Juvenile court and, most recently, targeted St. Louis public and charter schools.

MST helps to empower parents with the skills and resources needed to independently address the difficulties that arise in raising teenagers and to empower youth to cope with family, peer, school, and neighborhood problems.  The MST model is a family and community-based treatment that addresses the multiple factors that are known to be related to serious antisocial behavior and delinquency.

The model focuses on developing individualized, comprehensive, and integrated interventions that empower families to address risk factors and enhance protective factors.  MST focuses on family preservation while engaging the family as full participants in treatment.

The primary goals of MST are to:

• Preserve family placements for youth who are at-risk of disruptive and costly out-of-home placement due to ongoing delinquency, family conflict, untreated mental health issues, and substance use/abuse issues.
• Stabilize families who are experiencing high levels of conflict, and/or disorganization, resulting in recurring crises that interfere with optimal development of youth and the family system.
• Strengthen youth and families so that future challenges experienced during adolescence can be resolved by the family and a system of more natural supports.
   

Research by university-based professors and Community Alternatives' own staff demonstrated that Multisystemic Therapy (MST) decreases rates of juvenile delinquency and mental health symptoms.  MST saves taxpayer money through reducing out-of-home placements such as incarceration, residential treatment, and hospitalization.

MST is funded through the St. Louis Mental Health Board and the Missouri Foundation for Health.