University Times

Mental health treatments that work well in research clinics — outside the contexts of family and community — sometimes flop in the real world, Wynne Korr points out.

"Often, clinical trials will indicate that a particular medication or psycho-social intervention is effective. But when you try to use those techniques outside a controlled setting, you find people dropping out of treatment," the Pitt social work professor said.

Problems arise when, for example, researchers fail to consider different ethnic and religious groups' attitudes toward mental health, she said. "For many minority patients, mental health services are highly stigmatized. They don't want to be seen as being crazy, so they may be reluctant to go in for treatment," Korr noted.

Bridging the gap between clinic and community is among the goals of Pitt's new Center for Mental Health Services Research, funded by a $2 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Pitt's center, headquartered in 2217 Cathedral of Learning, is one of seven funded by NIMH to foster research leading to better services for the mentally ill.

Co-directed by Korr and psychiatry professor Carol Anderson, Pitt's center combines the academic components of the social work school with the clinical research expertise of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

"This prestigious federal grant will enable us to devote time and resources to tackling community mental health problems," Pitt social work Dean David Epperson said. "We are particularly excited about the prospects for collaboration among faculty from different disciplines." A 1991 study by an NIMH task force found that few social workers were involved in large-scale mental health research. Yet, twice as many social workers as psychologists and psychiatrists directly serve patients in community mental health settings.

"Getting access to mental health research has become one of the major priorities for the social work profession," Korr said. "That's part of what the National Institute of Mental Health is trying to do by creating these centers: to make the latest research available to social workers in the field.

"At the same time, they [NIMH] are encouraging people who do clinical research to begin thinking in terms of, what are the issues and potential problems when you start translating clinical findings into real-world settings?" One Pitt project, "Caring for Mothers with Children in Mental Health Treatment," is looking at the prevalence of anxiety and depression in mothers whose children are undergoing psychiatric treatment. Researchers, led by principal investigator Katherine Shear of the psychiatry department, have found that many children don't respond well to mental health treatment because of problems at home — particularly, problems caused by the fact that their own mothers suffer from untreated mental illness.

Pitt's social work school and Western Psych have collaborated over the years on projects in continuing education and training, but the Center for Mental Health Services Research represents the first formal research collaboration between the two units, according to Korr.

"We've done some preliminary [research] collaboration that helped build the bridges that led to this new center, but the center itself is the first, real formal one," she said.

— Bruce Steele