Challenge and Opportunity in Children’s Mental Health Research

Abstract

Children’s mental health services research is both challenged and enriched by the complex environment of services and supports that exist for children and their families. It is a context in which the structures and processes that define children’s mental health are diffused across multiple sectors and the pathways to care are unclear, unavailable, and often inappropriate for the children and families most in need of services and support. 1,2 This context presents a challenging research environment because it requires the development of knowledge and understanding within diffused service settings, across multiple and often multifaceted funding and service structures, and in collaboration with multiple stakeholders and an array of public and private agencies. The complexity of the research environment in which children’s mental health research is conducted creates methodological challenges that make it difficult for researchers to study phenomena objectively and independently of the natural service delivery settings. How do we understand the functioning of children’s service systems when they are composed of so many individual and dynamic parts? How do we understand the individual components of systems when we cannot isolate them from their multiple influences and interconnections? Either way, this makes for a research environment in which there are no clear starting points, it is difficult to isolate an intervention or create a control group, and researchers cannot assume that any variables are truly independent. Yet, these issues are faced daily in children’s mental health services research. This complex research environment also offers advantages. It is rich in opportunities to build knowledge that is based on experience and context, to build evidence of what works, and provide understanding of how successful service delivery models can be adapted to meet local needs. This special issue of the Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research (JBHS&R) on qualitative methods explores that opportunity. The goal of this special issue is to examine the process of conducting research in the real-world settings of children’s mental health and to learn more about those settings from the people who are part of them. The use of qualitative methods to build the knowledge base in children’s mental health services research is growing. Qualitative research methods are valued in developing knowledge through experience and context, in understanding multiple perspectives on an issue or topic, and in understanding the complexity in which phenomena exist. 3–5 Because child-serving environments