Center for Mental Health Services Year-end Report

October 1, 1999 to October 31, 2000

This is an extremely busy time for the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS). It is also an exciting time. The Year 1999 witnessed the first White House Conference on Mental Health and the first U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health. These milestone events set an optimistic tone for progress to be realized in coming years. Looking ahead, CMHS takes special pride in its contributions to improving mental health services. With a growing national focus on mental health issues, CMHS is poised to expand its record of accomplishments.

The Center is on the verge of an important new stage in its evolution that will be marked by the announcement of several new initiatives over the next year. CMHS will be 8 years old next month and now has 12 very significant, multi-site Knowledge Development and Application studies underway across the country. The studies cover subjects ranging from jail diversion to mental health care for older Americans.

These studies are destined to pay huge dividends in knowledge. The initiatives that CMHS will introduce over the next year are designed to incorporate more scientific knowledge into real-world changes in the Nation's mental health systems.

As CMHS continues to expand its knowledge base, it recognizes that preventing mental illness is an important element to changing mental health services. Given the U.S. Surgeon General's conviction that mental health should be part of mainstream health, it behooves the Nation to assign equal priority to promoting mental health and preventing mental health disorders. The Surgeon General's Report concludes that..."The field of prevention has now developed to the point that reduction of risk, prevention of onset, and early intervention are realistic possibilities. Scientific methodologies in prevention are increasingly sophisticated, and the results from high-quality research trials are as credible as those in other areas of biomedical and psychosocial science. There is a growing recognition that prevention does work; for example, improving parenting skills through training can substantially reduce antisocial behavior in children." (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999, pp. 132-133).

Certainly a focus on prevention has the potential to make an impact on many areas of concern to CMHS, including children with serious emotional disturbances, youth in juvenile justice facilities, and persons with mental health and substance abuse disorders, to name a few.

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