Introduction to Research on Social Work Practice Special Issue: Mental Health Services Research Supported by the National Institute of Mental Health

This article provides a brief overview of the conference at which the articles in this special issue were presented.

Newcomers and Old Timers: An Erroneous Assumption in Mental Health Services Research

Based on the premise that treatment changes people in ways that are consequential for subsequent treatment-seeking, we question the validity of an unrecognized and apparently inadvertent assumption in mental health services research conducted within a psychiatric epidemiology paradigm. This homogeneity assumption statistically constrains the effects of potential determinants of recent treatment to be identical for former patients and previously untreated persons by omitting treatment history or modeling only main effects. We test this assumption with data from the 2001–2003 Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys; the weighted pooled sample is representative of noninstitutionalized U.S. adults (18+; analytic n = 19,227). Contrary to the homogeneity assumption, some associations with recent treatment are conditional on past treatment, including psychiatric disorder and race-ethnicity—measures of need and treatment disparities, respectively. We conclude that the widespread application of the homogeneity assumption probably masks differences in the determinants of recent use between previously untreated persons and former patients.

NorthBEAT’s Capacity-to-Consent Protocol for Obtaining Informed Consent from Youth Evaluation Participants: An Alternative to Parental Consent

Ethical practice compels evaluators to obtain informed consent from evaluation participants. When those participants are minors, parental consent is routinely sought. However, seeking parental consent may not be appropriate in all evaluation contexts. This practice note presents one context (mental health services research in rural Canada) where seeking parental consent for youths’ participation in research was considered unethical and unfeasible. We present a two-step “capacity-to-consent” protocol that we developed to obtain consent from youth participants. This protocol offers an ethical and feasible alternative to seeking parental consent for youth. The implications for evaluation practice are discussed.Résumé : Pour se conformer à des pratiques éthiques, les évaluateurs doivent obte-nir le consentement éclairé de participants au projet. Lorsque ces participants sont des mineurs, le consentement des parents est généralement demandé. Cependant, il n’est pas toujours possible ou souhaitable d’obtenir le consentement des parents dans tous les contextes d’évaluation. La présente note de pratique présente un con-texte (recherche sur les services de santé mentale en milieu rural au Canada) où l’obtention du consentement d’un parent est considérée non éthique et impossible. Nous présentons un protocole en deux étapes de « capacité à consentir » que nous avons mis au point pour obtenir le consentement de jeunes participants. Ce protocole offre une solution de rechange éthique et applicable à l’obtention du consentement des parents pour les jeunes. On discute des ramifications du protocole pour la pratique de l’évaluation.