Effort-based decision-making as a determinant of supported employment outcomes in psychotic disorders

Schizophrenia is associated with a heavy economic burden in the United States that is partly due to the high rates of chronic unemployment. Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is an evidenced-based type of supported employment that can improve job obtainment and work outcomes in psychotic disorders. Outcomes vary widely and a persistent challenge for IPS is low levels of engagement in the initial job search phase. Past studies have focused on interview-based motivation deficits as a key determinant of poor treatment engagement and work outcomes in schizophrenia. New validated performance-based measures of motivation, including effort-based decision-making (EBDM) tasks, may explain supported employment outcomes and provide insights into individual differences in IPS outcomes. This study investigated the degree to which IPS engagement (i.e., number of sessions attended during the first four months of service delivery) was related to baseline interview-based motivation deficits and performance on three EBDM tasks - two tasks of physical effort and one of cognitive effort (i.e., Balloon Task, Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task, Deck Choice Effort Task) - in a sample (N = 47) of people with a psychotic disorder. Results indicated that the level of EBDM performance, specifically on the Balloon Task, predicted IPS engagement, accounting for an additional 17 % of the variance above and beyond interview-based motivation deficits (total R² = 24 %). Overall, these findings suggest that addressing motivational deficits in effort-based decision-making may be beneficial to IPS engagement, which in turn may improve the trajectory of work outcomes.