Revisiting Practice-Based Research Networks as a Platform for Mental Health Services Research

Abstract

Practice-based research networks (PBRNs)—collaborations of practice settings that work together to generate research knowledge—are underused in mental health services research. This article proposes an agenda for mental health services research that uses a variety of PBRN structures and that focuses on what really happens in practice, the effectiveness of practice innovations in real world care, the challenges of implementing evidence supported interventions, modification of clinician behavior, and assessment of the effect of mental health policy changes on practice. The challenges of conducting research within PBRNs are substantial, including difficulties in maintaining positive member relations, securing ongoing funding, sustaining productivity, overcoming IRB entanglements and achieving both scientific excellence in recruitment and measurement validity and utility for practitioner members. However, the awareness of these challenges allows researchers and practitioners to build networks that creatively overcome them and that infuse mental health services research with heavy doses of the realities of everyday clinical practice.

Building clinicians-researchers partnerships: Lessons from diverse natural settings and practice-oriented initiatives

“…Additional lessons can be derived from research programs in the field of mental health that have not been represented in this series, such as the process and outcome studies by Jacqueline Persons (e.g., Persons, Roberts, Zalecki, & Brechwald, 2006) and David Burns (e.g., Burns & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1992) in specialized cognitive therapy centers, as well the work that has been conducted within the Healthy Families America Research Practice Network (Galano & Schellenbach, 2007) on the prevention of child maltreatment (see Castonguay et al, 2013;McMillen, Lenze, Hawley, & Osbourne, 2009). Moreover, much can be learned from partnerships of practitioners and researchers in a wide range of health care and medical fields, including nursing, primary care, pediatrics, and family medicine.…”

Using Principles of Practice-Based Research to Teach Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work

“…The knowledge development function of practitioner-based research can take the shape of large-scale, multi-agency joint ventures or it can be as simple as pilot testing an ESI in a particular organization and documenting the lessons learned in the "living" process of implementation (Martinez-Brawley, 1995). McMillen et al (2009) identified four characteristics of practice-based research. First, it produces data that reflect the conditions of providing services in community-based programs, not academic settings.…”

“…McMillen et al (2009) suggested that practice-based research be used to investigate how organizational issues like funding, regulation, and accreditation affect clinical decision making. They maintain that a bottom-up process of inquiry is better suited to complexity of that topic than a traditional research design would be.…”

“…Given this emphasis on local knowledge, there is a support in the practicebased research literature for the use of practitioner/agency-generated clinical data to be used as a source of data under certain circumstances and after it has been subjected to recognized data analysis techniques (Epstein, 2001;Fitch & Grogan-Kaylor, 2012;McMillen et al, 2009).…”

“…The priority of this knowledge creation is on the highest internal validity possible. To that end, researchers often exclude from participation people who have co-morbidities (McMillen, Lenze, Hawley, & Osborne 2009;Zlotnik, 2007). One study investigated the extent of similarity between the conditions of community-based treatment and the conditions under which two popular interventions for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder respectively were developed.…”