Research

Over the past several decades research in global mental health has moved toward a more integrative, trans-disciplinary understanding of mental health that seeks to ensure the use of evidence-based approaches to care that are adapted to context. Increasingly, there has been an emphasis on a research-to-practice perspective, with additional attention paid to capacity building for researchers as well as to clinicians working in low-resource settings. The Pierce Division has had a history of significant research efforts in global mental health since its inception. 

Research of the present and future will look to capitalize on synergies across innovations in global and domestic community mental health spheres. This will include implementation science, tech-enabled solutions, community-based participatory research and peer involvement, and interdisciplinary public health. This research has a broad scope, across prevention, intervention and the newer science of flourishing. Interventions of the future will include scalable intervention design and/or delivery innovations, for both common and severe mental disorders, precise interventions (e.g., just-in-time adaptive interventions), and integrated care (e.g., HIV/NCDs and mental healthcare). 

Research will also include a growing focus on thriving and resilience, including posttraumatic growth, positive psychology applications to interventions for resilience, and investigations of ‘flourishing’ (e.g., moderators, mediators).

The need for research in global mental health and psychiatry
Ongoing areas of research in global mental health have included integrating treatment of common mental disorders in primary care, community-based treatment of severe and persistent mental illness, reducing stigma due to mental illness, and integrated frameworks for prevention of mental disorders, including women’s mental health, child mental health, and social determinants research. Implementation science, the knowledge base to optimally embed and sustain effective interventions within clinical and community systems, will continue to enable the testing of a range of implementation strategies and interventions. This will be enhanced by a wealth of new research on digital tools and data science for mental health care delivery across all global settings. 

Future research will continue to explore capacity-building research, policy and clinical spheres, integrating frameworks for prevention, addressing social determinants of mental health, scaling up for sustainability and policies, and placing a greater focus on serious mental illness. There will be an expansion of efforts in the field to strengthen the research capacity of institutions in low- and middle-income countries through multidirectional and reciprocal programs. Social determinants and rapid social change will also be compelling areas of research. Drug discovery work, genomics and precision psychiatry will innovate ways to uncover new therapeutic targets, identify genetic markers that might indicate how someone might respond to a particular medication, and diagnose and treat diseases across diverse populations.