ORGANIZATION, FINANCING--CARE FOR SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL

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The Rutgers University Institute of Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research proposes to establish a Center on the Organization and Financing of Care for the Severely Mentally Ill under the direction of David Mechanic. This Center involves close collaboration with the Department of Mental Health and Hospitals of the State of New Jersey, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the Robet Wood Johnson Community Mental Health Center, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's initiatives for the Chronically Mentally Ill. The interdisciplinary Center will provide a focused context for the mental health research efforts of 33 faculty and postdoctoral students at the Institute from a variety of fields: sociology, psychiatry, demography, economics, nursing, law, psychology, anthropology, social work, urban planning, public health, communications, family medicine and public policy. In addition, five key professionals from the Department of Mental Health and Hospitals will participate in the Center, making the state's data bases available for mental health services research. The Institute also has the capacity to draw on its 80 additional faculty associate members, who bring further expertise from a wide range of disciplines and professional schools. The research agenda of the Institute includes 22 studies on topics which include the following: the effect of service components on patient functioning and the quality of patients' lives; mental health financing and legal issues affecting the severely mentally ill; mental health services for adolescents and young adults, and minority groups; investigation of case-management and crisis services; financial regulations (e.g. DRGs) and mental health organization and practice; housing for the CMI; and provision of general medical services for the CMI. Our program is based on the belief that the complexity of the field demands an array of research projects, each of which requires focus, specificity, and a disciplinary foundation. But if these projects are to be valuable to policy-makers and practitioners, they need to be embedded in an inter-disciplinary framework which gives them cohesion and purpose. We also plan unique dissemination efforts, working with the Eagleton Institute of Politics, to bring research implications to the attention of opinion leaders and state legislators.