Program Strategy

• Point One — Health Behaviors

  The development and enhancement of public and private mental health service delivery systems will be examined from social, political, and economic perspectives. We will define mental health problems broadly and include behaviors such as drug addiction, alcoholism, smoking, and children's mental health as well as problems like bipolar disorder, depression, and trauma-related stress. This list is meant to be illustrative, and does not exclude other possibilities.

• Point Two —Research and Training

  In the next five years we want to establish collaborative research work throughout the region. Researchers will include people from a variety of professional and academic disciplines, such as PhDs in psychology or psychiatry, economics, sociology, social psychology or social work, or related fields. Researchers could be academics or practitioners, and could include PhD students. Training will be done through conferences, and as a part of the research effort. An option will exist for selected, very well qualified researchers to have a one semester or one year training in residence at Berkeley.

• Point Three — Training Seminars and Research Projects

  We will use intensive research training seminars of one or two weeks duration. There will be two sessions per year: one in Berkeley each January, and one in central Europe each summer. The goal of these seminars will be to develop research agendas, develop research expertise, foster the growth of a research support structure, and review and support the research projects.

• Point Four — Expansion Countries

  This year we will expand from the Czech and Slovak Republics to include Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia. We will also explore the possibility of expanding to Turkey in the future.

Conference Objectives

To implement the four point strategy, the Conference has been designed around these objectives.

• Present key mental health issues and research methods

  The work of the Conference will begin with presentations by Berkeley and Charles faculty and other recognized experts on the financing, organization, and reform of mental health systems. These presentations will provide a broad picture of the problems, reform objectives and strategies in the context of potential research.

• Country introductions

  Each of the five countries will describe the structure of its mental health system, its organization, how it is financed, what reforms have been made or attempted, what the major obstacles to reform are, and what the major mental health or behavioral problems are. Each country will also be asked to develop a list of priorities regarding possible research areas.

• Regional (cross-nationality) alignment on key research issues

  Four or five key research issues will be determined, based on the intersection of individual country priorities, global understanding of key topics regarding mental health systems, and what issues have high current interest in the European Union. Research issues will be defined as broad areas, such as financing, de-institutionalization, delivering mental health services to aging populations, etc., that could be researched in any or all of the countries. The challenges (e.g., lack of data, cultural resistance) of researching each of these areas will also be discussed.

• Promote an international research infrastructure

  Groups will be formed with members from each country, plus faculty, to discuss each of the key research areas. This discussion will frame the research program. Each research area will be defined to have a set of problems which any or all of the countries would find useful for proposing research projects.

• Assignments to identify and propose research

  The conference will end with assignments for each country to propose research projects to the program directors by a certain date. Proposals will be reviewed by the faculty, and approved projects will be eligible for some funding support by the program.

Summary of Expected Results

The conference is expected to produce these results:

• A regional network of academic scholars and researchers in mental health financing and services.
• A common understanding of current global and European thinking on these issues.
• A mutual understanding of mental health and behavioral problems, and system reform issues common the countries of the region.
• Agreement on the four or five areas that have top priority for research, and the research challenges associated with them.
• An understanding of each of those areas sufficient to enable scholars to propose specific research projects for possible funding by the program.