Although research on effective child and adolescent mental health interventions has grown significantly over the past two decades, public mental health care systems have been slow to draw on this research. In Massachusetts, the Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative was created in response to a court-order to identify and provide high-quality services to Medicaid-eligible children with serious emotional disorders. Nicholson and colleagues will take advantage of this push for reform by studying the Initiative’s use of research. They hope to gain insight into how the policy and sociopolitical context of mental health reform in Massachusetts is shaping research use; how provider agencies are acquiring, interpreting and using research findings; and how agencies’ varying resources and social processes are influencing research use. The study includes the Massachusetts state agencies responsible for child and adolescent mental health services and six provider agencies. Nicholson and colleagues will also be examining research use in the context of day-to-day clinical decision-making.
Although research on effective child and adolescent mental health interventions has grown significantly over the past two decades, public mental health care systems have been slow to draw on this research.
