Evaluating Community Mental Health Services

The burden of mental illness on individuals, families, and communities has created profound challenges for our society. In recent years treatments and services for the mentally ill have moved almost exclusively to community settings, yet no comprehensive and progressive policies have emerged to counter stigmatizing and facilitate integration.

A comprehensive international review providing guidance in appropriate research strategies for evaluation of mental health services.

This book addresses evaluation issues relating to community-based mental health services for children and young people with emotional and behavioural problems. The contributors discuss recent evaluations of the effectiveness of systems of care and specific intervention strategies. In addition to describing their individual research, they consider: issues facing researchers conducting mental health evaluation; limitations of evaluation in mental health services; and implications for future research.

This issue consists of five articles profiling different aspects of the national evaluation of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program. Over the last eight years, this program provided grants to develop community-based systems of care for children with serious emotional disturbance and their families. A comprehensive, multilevel evaluation has been conducted that has provided information to local grantee communities and the federal government on the implementation and effectiveness of systems of care. Touching on a range of questions that the evaluation is designed to address, the articles in this special issue provide more general information on the system-of-care approach to addressing children's mental health problems.