Mental Health Services

Division of Mental Health Services & Treatment Outcomes Research

Robert A. Rosenheck, MD, Director
Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health
Yale School of Medicine
Director, VA Northeast Program Evaluation Center

The task of health services research is to provide information on what benefits the health system actually delivers, and what benefits it has the potential to deliver, for the people it serves. Services research is concerned with the benefit or harm that actually accrues to patients in ordinary treatment programs in the real world. Health services research addresses the organizational, financial and political context which profoundly shapes the delivery of care. Over a decade ago a National Institute of Mental Health panel identified three branches of mental health services research: clinical services research; service systems research; and research in the organization and financing of mental health services. Department of Psychiatry faculty, in its Division of Mental Health Services & Treatment Outcomes Research, are providing national leadership in all of these areas.

Some examples of studies in the Division of Mental Health Services & Treatment Outcomes Research include:

• A study of the cost-effectiveness of residential respite care as an alternative to hospitalization, intensive case management, clozapine pharmacotherapy of refractory schizophrenia, SSRI antidepressants, and inpatient and outpatient treatment of PTSD.
• A study addressing the cost-effectiveness of an array of atypical antipsychotic medications in adults, the use of case management in the care of high cost medical illness, a family support intervention, supported housing, medication compliance, naltrexone in the treatment of alcoholism, and olanzapine for schizophrenia.

Service Systems Research

• A study using national data bases to demonstrate barriers to mental health services and to medical services among patients with both mental health and medical problems.
• A major trial assessing delivery of medical services within a mental health clinic.

Organization and Financing of Services

• A study of the effect of managed care on the delivery of mental health care both nationally and locally.
• The first study to demonstrate a relationship between service system integration and client outcomes.

Interested students, fellows or faculty are welcome to contact the following individual for additional information:

Robert A. Rosenheck, MD, Director

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