The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation created the Network on Mental Health Policy Research in 1999 to conduct research and analysis to guide health policymakers. The Network’s formation was in response to the dramatic changes in our nation’s mental health system. Little information was available to policymakers about what mattered most for individuals with severe mental disorders -- access to quality care and resources to pay for it in each community.

Before the Network, the mental health field had no independent research forum for discussing its concerns about fairness and equity. There was virtually no research on the quality and efficiency of mental health policies and services. The members of the Network come from diverse fields, including psychiatry, psychology, sociology, pediatrics, economics, business, and law. They meet three or four times each year to discuss mental health policy issues, develop research ideas, and react to research and analyses in progress. Members collaborate on studies overseen by the Network as a whole.

At first, the Network focused on how to improve the quality of care in traditional settings where specialized mental health services are given. But over time it became clear that most people with mental illness are not in traditional settings. They are in primary health care, in the workplace, or in schools. Sometimes they are in the juvenile justice or criminal justice systems. Their presence in this range of settings is a consequence of the past half-century of policies that moved care from state mental hospitals back to communities. And what little is known about community settings suggests, in many instances, poor quality of care.

The Network has set as its goal to address the major policy challenge of the next decade: to examine ways to deliver high quality care both within and beyond the traditional boundaries of the mental health system. Research undertaken in wide-ranging settings can guide policymakers who wish to ensure greater access to high-quality services for people with mental illness.

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Last modified: June 1, 2006
©2006 MacArthur Foundation Network on Mental Health Policy Research
Last Revised: June 2006