Clinical Services Research: Quality, Effectiveness, Outcome

SW824, Section 001

What works, for whom, under what circumstances? The course will examine qualitative, historical, and quantitative research on the quality, effectiveness, and outcome of clinical services to persons with mental illnesses over the past 100 years. The primary focus will be on: 1) varying theoretical approaches to conceptualizing, measuring, treating and rehabilitating persons with mental illnesses (and how each is influenced by medical, social, economic, professional and political factors); and 2) the theoretical and practical issues in designing and conducting research on the effectiveness and outcomes of clinical services. The guiding framework for the course is a clinical services approach which emphasizes how the organization of care influences the kinds and effectiveness of clinical care. Questions and topics addressed within this framework include the following: What are the research findings on hospital based care, community care, deinstitutionalization, dehospitalization, homelessness, jails and prisons? How do social welfare and medical systems interrelations influence access, quality, effectiveness and outcome? How organizational, economic, legal, medical, social policy, and social factors influence access to care and the kinds and effectiveness of clinical services provided to persons with mental illnesses, as well as their racial/ethnic characteristics. How varying social conditions and processes such as poverty, deinstitutionalization (dehospitalization) and homelessness are related to differing theoretical conceptions of mental illnesses and specific social policies that influence the fragmentation or integration of needed services or the focus on acute care vs. rehabilitation and community functioning. The origin and implications of the recent emergence of family and consumer organization as major participants in the provision of care, along with mental health professionals. What are the implications of the extant research for social work practice? What is the research needed to improve social work practice and clinical services for more effective care and rehabilitation? Under what conditions will direct service practitioners incorporate research findings into their work with the mentally ill?