From the Director
David L. Shern, PhD

I'm delighted to formally welcome you to the first meeting of our research Faculty and National Advisory Board. We've tried to design a program that will allow us both to share information about the Center and to get your input regarding our strategies for its development. Perhaps our biggest challenge is to forge an independent identity for the Center and a sense of commitment by the faculty to its goals. We hope to do this by developing an intellectual community that will be responsive to the needs of the Center's multiple constituencies and a research program that will contribute both to the New York public mental health system and to our general knowledge of the principles of system design.

The Center was officially funded at the end of September 1993. Since then, many of its research projects have begun and the Executive Committee has met monthly to articulate its mission and operating structure. Today is our first opportunity to discuss our progress. We very much look forward to your participation in this process and your evaluation of our plans for creating the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health.

New faculty appointments

The Center's Executive Committee recently appointed several individuals to the Center's faculty. Appointed to the Executive Committee of the Center, where she will serve as co-director of the Special Populations Core, was Ethel Davis Jackson, RN, MS, associate commissioner of adult services for the New York State Office of Mental Health.

Also appointed to the faculty were Carmen Aponte, PhD, visiting professor in the Department of Social Work at the University at Brockport; Robert J. Grantham, PhD, director of community services at the Binghamton Psychiatric Center; Beatrice Kovasznay, MD, PhD, chief of psychiatry at the Capital District Psychiatric Center and director of mental health services research at the Albany Medical College; Lewis Opler, MD, PhD, medical director of the New York City Regional Office of the New York State Office of Mental Health; Mary D. Redd, MSS, executive director of the Steinway Child & Family Services of Long Island City; Judith A. Samuels, MBA, research consultant to the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and lecturer in public administration at New York University; and Joseph Suarez, PhD, director of the Minority Education, Research and Training Institute.

Among the new faculty members, Dr. Aponte, Dr. Grantham, Ms. Redd, and Dr. Suarez are all members of the New York State Office of Mental Health's Multicultural Advisory Committee.

Dr. Hatfield resigns from National Advisory Board

Agnes Hatfield, PhD, professor emeritus in the Department of Human Development at the University of Maryland and a founding member and first president of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, recently resigned from her position as a member of the Center's National Advisory Board. In accepting her resignation, the Center's director, David L. Shern, PhD, cited Dr. Hatfield's support of the Center and its activities.

Center and Office of Mental Health developing seminar series

The New York State Office of Mental Health and the Center for the Study of Issues in Mental Health are planning to jointly sponsor a seminar series on topics of interest for managing mental health systems of the future. Efforts are being made to introduce the series by late spring or early summer. Dates and titles of individual seminars will be announced as they become available.

Planning under way for research forum on multicultural issues

In collaboration with the New York State Office of Mental Health's Multicultural Advisory Committee, the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health is planning to sponsor a forum on multicultural issues. The goals of the forum will be to explore multicultural issues, to develop concept papers, and to identify fundable research topics. Underlying the development of the forum, says David L. Shern, PhD, the Center's director, is a commitment to make a difference in the field of mental health services research and to have the research speak to the culture in which it is operationalized.The forum is tentatively scheduled for the fall of this year.

System initiatives core research project receives funding

Building upon the work that was stimulated by writing the Center grant, Center faculty members Jeryl Mumpower, PhD, Bruce Way, MA, Thomas Stewart, PhD, David L. Shern, PhD, and Andrea Blanch, PhD, along with others from the Office of Mental Health, submitted and received competitive funding to extend a Center project. The funding, from the Center for Technology in Government at the State University of New York, will be used to develop and evaluate decision guidelines for use in emergency psychiatric assessments. Methods derived from expert judgment and group decision support technology will be applied to develop a best-practice decision model. It is expected that the decision model that is developed will help put the experience and training of the best professionals to use in improving the performance of all practitioners.

The Center for Technology in Government was created to foster cooperation among government, academia, and the private sector for testing technological solutions to government problems. The Center pursues creative ways of applying computing and communications technologies directly to the practical problems of information management and service delivery in the public sector. It focuses on increasing productivity, reducing costs, increasing coordination, and enhancing the quality of government operations and public services.

Center seminar updates

A series of seminars in support of the Center's three research cores began in March at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research with a presentation by Robert E. Drake, MD, titled "Recent Findings on the Longitudinal Causes of Substance Abuse in People with Severe Mental Disorders." An associate professor of psychiatry and director of research in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth, Dr. Drake has conducted extensive research on innovative service initiatives with persons diagnosed with severe mental illness and substance abuse problems.

His presentation provided a description of the problem, services trials in the field in the late '80s and early '90s, consistent findings from longitudinal research on alcoholism, problems related to assessing people with substance abuse and severe mental disorders, standard dimensions of substance disorders as reflected on most substance abuse instruments, and early findings of his research study in New Hampshire with a population of experimental and control subjects receiving dual disorder treatment.

Late in March, at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Christiana Drake, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Statistics at the University of California, Davis, presented a seminar on the propensity score approach. Titled "Propensity Score: Definitions and Applications in Observational Studies," the seminar covered observational studies versus randomized trials; confounding, a major issue in observational studies; parametric and non-parametric methods to reduce bias due to confounding; applications of the propensity score method; and discussion of the pros and cons to both approaches.

In mid-March, faculty and guests gathered together at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research for a working conference organized by Kim Hopper, PhD, on "Unresolved Issues of Informed Consent in Field Settings. Providing the keynote address, "In-formed Consent: Practice vs. Paper," was Sue Estroff, PhD, associate professor of social medicine and adjunct associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina.

Responding to Dr. Estroff's address were Susan Delano, clinical research coordinator of the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene; Kostas Gounis, PhD, research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University; and Marybeth Shinn, PhD, professor of community psychology at New York University. Among the issues examined in the seminar were how field researchers and anthropologists could explore alternative models of collaboration with subjects that would better meet the demands of both reciprocity and informed consent. In field settings, ethical quandaries are typically framed in less explicit -- or better, more developmental -- terms than is the case with biomedical research in clinical settings. Practical means for identifying and dealing with such issues are badly needed and Center-based projects will be exploring several alternatives in the near future. A report of the day's proceedings is in preparation.

On May 27, Caroline L. Kaufmann, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute, presented "The Bottom Line: Outcomes in Vocational Rehabilitation" to Center faculty and guests at the Capital District Psychiatric Center. Her talk focused on newly available data from a multi-year demonstration program studying the impact of a consumer-run employment program.

Videotapes are available on loan for the presentations by Dr. Robert Drake and Dr. Christiana Drake. They may be obtained from any of the three Center collaborating institutions.

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Update Feb. 1995

Last updated on November 8, 1996, by Elizabeth Pease