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Objective: This systematic review examines experimental studies that test the effectiveness of strategies intended to integrate empirically supported mental health interventions into routine care settings. Our goal was to characterize the state of the literature and to provide direction for future implementation studies. Method: A literature search was conducted using electronic databases and a manual search. Results: Eleven studies were identified that tested implementation strategies with a randomized ( n = 10) or controlled clinical trial design ( n = 1). The wide range of clinical interventions, implementation strategies, and outcomes evaluated precluded meta-analysis. However, the majority of studies ( n = 7; 64%) found a statistically significant effect in the hypothesized direction for at least one implementation or clinical outcome. Conclusion: There is a clear need for more rigorous research on the effectiveness of implementation strategies, and we provide several suggestions that could improve this research area.

Grant writing is a necessary skill for becoming an independent and successful social work researcher. Since social work dissertation grants are a relatively new trend, students face many challenges in identifying, preparing, and submitting dissertation grants. Lack of resources and experiences, difficulties in protecting time for grant writing, and the uncertainty of success can hinder work on dissertation grants. Thus, this article provides an overview of dissertation grants, including a review of grant mechanisms, suggestions for preparing grants in the context of program milestones, and identifying institutional infrastructure to facilitate submissions. Strategies discussed include how to learn about funding priorities, how to establish timelines to account for grant deadlines, and how to use peer reviews to guide the revision process.

This study—on 100 African American wife and 258 daughter primary caregivers — uses a contextual approach in its examination of the relationship between social resources and caregiver depressive symptoms. At the bivariate level, significant differences in certain key characteristics of primary caregivers and care receivers underscore the generational differences between the caregiver samples. Using separate ordinary least squares regression models, the authors found that satisfaction with family functioning was a significant predictor for lower depressive symptoms for both wives' and daughters' depressive symptoms. However, social participation and availability of secondary help were negatively associated with depressive symptoms for daughters. Receipt of instrumental support was predictive of higher levels of depressive symptoms among daughters. The findings indicate the importance of accounting for the contextual differences in our understanding of depressive symptoms, specifically the differences in the relationship between social resources and depressive symptoms for wives and daughters. Practice and theoretical implications are also discussed.

Most local communities lack the capacity to conduct behavioral health needs assessments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a mixed-methods approach to estimate the behavioral health needs in St. Louis, MO. Data were drawn from multiple sources including local and state government prevalence estimates, medical records, and key informant interviews. The most prevalent behavioral conditions were depression, alcohol, and drug abuse. Priority populations were residents with co-occurring disorders, youth transitioning into the adult behavioral system, and homeless individuals with behavioral health needs. Treatment rates for behavioral health conditions were low, relative to identified needs. There are significant provider shortages and high staff turnover, which extend wait times, diminish the quality of care, and contribute to the use of emergency departments for behavioral health care. The data and methods described in this paper could be helpful to other municipalities that are looking to conduct behavioral health needs assessments.

POLICY POINTS: When communicating with state legislators, advocates for state behavioral health parity laws should emphasize that the laws do not increase insurance premiums. Legislators' opinions about the impacts of state behavioral health parity laws and the effectiveness of behavioral health treatment have more influence on support for the laws than do their political party affiliation or state‐level contextual factors. Reducing legislators' stigma toward people with mental illness could increase their support for state behavioral health parity laws. CONTEXT: Comprehensive state behavioral health parity legislation (C‐SBHPL) is an evidence‐based policy that improves access and adherence to behavioral health treatments. However, adoption of C‐SBHPL by state legislators is low. Little is known about how C‐SBHPL evidence might be most effectively disseminated to legislators or how legislators' fixed characteristics (eg, ideology), mutable characteristics (eg, beliefs about the policy's impact), and state‐level contextual factors might influence their support for behavioral health policies. The purpose of our study is (1) to describe the associations between legislators' fixed and mutable characteristics, state‐level contextual factors, and support for C‐SBHPL; and (2) to identify the mutable characteristics of legislators independently associated with C‐SBHPL support. METHODS: We conducted a multimodal (post mail, email, telephone) survey of US state legislators in 2017 (N = 475). The dependent variable was strong support for C‐SBHPL, and the independent variables included legislators' fixed and mutable characteristics and state‐level contextual factors. We conducted multivariable, multilevel (legislator, state) logistic regression. FINDINGS: Thirty‐nine percent of the legislators strongly supported C‐SBHPL. After adjustment, the strongest predictors of C‐SBHPL support were beliefs that C‐SBHPL increases access to behavioral health treatments (aOR = 5.85; 95% CI = 2.41, 14.20) and does not increase insurance ...

State mental health agencies (SMHAs) are integral to public behavioral health service systems. As such, senior-level officials within SMHAs are important targets for advocacy and dissemination of behavioral health research findings. Evidence-informed decision making in SMHAs can potentially be enhanced by developing summaries of behavioral health research (e.g., policy briefs) that reflect SMHA officials' information preferences, but knowledge about these preferences is lacking. An exploratory study was conducted with the aims of characterizing senior-level SMHA officials' preferences for behavioral health research and describing where they turn for this research when making policy decisions. A cross-sectional, web-based survey of senior-level SMHA officials (one per state) was conducted in March-May 2017 (n= 43, response rate=84%). The features of behavioral health research that SMHA officials identified as "very important" most frequently were research being relevant to state residents (93.0%), providing data on cost-effectiveness (86.0%) and budget impact (81.4%), and being presented concisely (81.0%). The primary sources that SMHA officials turned to for behavioral research when making policy decisions were professional organizations (79.1%), SMHA agency staff (60.5%), and university researchers (55.8%). Compared with state legislators' responses to the same survey questions, results suggest that senior-level SMHA officials and legislators have similar preferences for behavioral health research but turn to different sources for this research. Advocates and researchers who seek to promote evidence-informed decision making in SMHAs should consider developing policy briefs that are concise, provide state-level prevalence data about behavioral conditions, contain economic evaluation data, and should disseminate these materials to multiple sources.

Efforts to identify, develop, refine, and test strategies to disseminate and implement evidence-based treatments have been prioritized in order to improve the quality of health and mental health care delivery. However, this task is complicated by an implementation science literature characterized by inconsistent language use and inadequate descriptions of implementation strategies. This article brings more depth and clarity to implementation research and practice by presenting a consolidated compilation of discrete implementation strategies, based on a review of 205 sources published between 1995 and 2011. The resulting compilation includes 68 implementation strategies and definitions, which are grouped according to six key implementation processes: planning, educating, financing, restructuring, managing quality, and attending to the policy context. This consolidated compilation can serve as a reference to stakeholders who wish to implement clinical innovations in health and mental health care and can facilitate the development of multifaceted, multilevel implementation plans that are tailored to local contexts.