CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON CARE OF SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL

This application requests support to establish the Western Mental
Health Research Center (WMHRC) as a collaborative effort by the
Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) Department of
Psychiatry, the State of Oregon Mental Health Division, and the
Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (CHR). The
purpose of the WMHRC is to study the delivery of mental health
services to severely mentally ill individuals. The WMHRC will
provide an environment in which researchers can make use of data
provided by Oregon's public and private mental health systems to
examine innovative mechanisms for maintaining severely mentally
ill persons in the community. Oregon's public mental health system is nationally recognized for
its dedication to meeting the needs of the chronically mentally ill.
The WMHRC will allow researchers to build on longstanding
relationships among the three collaborating institutions in order
to study this model system. Clinicians, administrators, and
researchers will collaborate in predicting and analyzing the
effects of policy changes. Methodology will be developed to
evaluate the effectiveness of public mental health programs.
Computer linkages will be established among the OHSU
Department of Psychiatry, the State of Oregon Mental Health
Division, and the CHR. These linkages will facilitate the
exchange and analysis of data derived from Oregon's programs for
the sverely mentally ill. Interdisciplinary projects will foster a
flow of information between clinicians in the public mental health
sector and researchers. Two major studies of the right to refuse treatment and of
severely mentally ill health maintenance organization members
will begin when the WMHRC is funded. Future research at the
WMHRC will focus on "hard to place" state hospital patients,
chronically mentally ill Indochinese refugees, geriatric state
hospital patients, and capitated payment systems for the
chronically mentally ill.