Mental Health Services /Criminal Justice Research Center

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请要求为一个发展中的服务研究中心提供资金，该中心专门研究精神疾病患者与刑事司法系统接触时产生的精神卫生服务问题。这里提出的精神卫生服务和刑事司法研究中心的目的是：(a)改进精神卫生和刑事司法系统对精神病患者的需求作出反应的方式，(b)为旨在影响这些反应的政策提供信息。这一目标将通过建立一个多学科研究团队来实现，该团队将与从业人员、政策制定者、倡导团体和消费者进行沟通并作出回应。该中心将设在罗格斯大学（Rutgers University），由dr。Nancy Wolff （RU）和William Fisher（马萨诸塞大学医学院，UMMS）。罗格斯网站将提供MH-CJ系统动力学的研究和培训结构，并将协调所有与中心相关的活动。多学科团队将位于一个“无国界”的研究环境中，该环境将包括位于全国各地的研究人员和研究地点。中心的核心任务将是招募美国各地的初级和高级研究人员，他们对开发和应用他们的专业知识来解决MH-CJ系统动态相关问题感兴趣。在中心的支持下，他们将共同进行严谨的跨学科MH-CJ服务研究。该中心的研究议程将侧重于两个领域。前体遭遇刑事司法系统是第一个研究领域。我们这里的重点是精神疾病患者以及这个人如何引起CJ系统的注意。了解这种动态对制定预防和遏制战略至关重要。加工动力学是第二个研究领域。在这里，我们将重点关注CJ系统如何应对个人的精神疾病，因为该人通过CJ连续体从法院到监狱/监狱再到社区。中心赞助的研究将解决精神疾病的识别和评估问题，监狱内和释放后几周的治疗，以及试图影响CJ系统对精神疾病反应的不同政策倡议和创新。预计拟议的发展中心将制定一个概念上连贯的研究议程和支持方法，以及一系列研究计划，最终将提交和资助赠款申请，提供将改进实践的发现。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application requests funding for a developing services research center that focuses exclusively on mental health (MH) services issues that arise when persons with mental illness have encounters with the criminal justice (CJ) system. The Mental Health Services and Criminal Justice (MHS&CJ) Research Center proposed here is designed (a) to improve the ways in which the mental health and criminal justice (MH-CJ) systems respond to the needs of persons with mental illness and (b) to inform the policies that are intended to affect these responses. This objective will be accomplished by building a multidisciplinary team of researchers that will communicate with and respond to practitioners, policy makers, advocacy groups, and consumers. The center will be situated at Rutgers University (RU) and co-directed by Drs. Nancy Wolff (RU) and William Fisher (University of Massachusetts Medical School, UMMS). The Rutgers site will provide the structure for research and training in MH-CJ systems dynamics and will coordinate all Center-related activities. The multidisciplinary team will be situated in a "borderless" research environment that will include researchers and research sites located around the country. Central to the Center's mission will be the recruitment of junior and senior researchers across the U.S. who are interested in developing and applying their expertise to issues related to the MH-CJ systems dynamic. Together, under the Center's auspices, they will pursue rigorous interdisciplinary MH-CJ services research. The Center's research agenda will focus on two areas. Precursors to the criminal justice system encounter is the first area of research. Our emphasis here is on the individual with mental illness and how that person comes to the attention of the CJ system. Understanding this dynamic is central to the development of prevention and desistance strategies. Processing dynamics is the second area of research. Here we will focus on how the CJ system responds to the individual's mental illness as the person moves through the CJ continuum from court to jail/prison to the community. Center-sponsored research will address the issues of identification and evaluation of mental illness, its treatment inside the jail and in the weeks post-release, and the different policy initiatives and innovations that attempt to impact the CJ system's response to mental illness. It is expected that the proposed developing center will develop a conceptually coherent research agenda and supporting methods, and a series of research initiatives that will culminate in the submission and funding of grant applications that provide findings that will improve practice.