"An Insider's Perspective"

via ALTmentalities:

Reflections on time spent as a “researcher” in the field of children’s mental health 

02/16/2012 Posted by ALT

"For two years, I worked full time in the field of children’s mental health program evaluation and research as a “Research Project Coordinator.” My boss, the “Principal Investigator,” and I had been contracted to implement a standardized, predetermined program evaluation of what is called a “system of care” – a program that coordinates and delivers services to children with mental health challenges.   The system of care had been set up with money from SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration], part of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

"Any community that received funds from SAMHSA to start one of these “systems of care” – and there were over 144 of them! – had to agree to implement the full data collection protocol, which required in-depth multiple choice interviews be administered to about 250 families. Researchers were also expected to access extensive school records, court records, and medical records from the community mental health center.  Again, these research methods were implemented over and over, in every one of those 144 funded communities.

"In short, the “Children’s Mental Health Initiative” (as SAMHSA calls it) is the largest standardized children’s mental health research project ever conducted.  The datasets collected by this massive undertaking  – nearly 20 years’ worth of data on tens of thousands of families – are owned by the government and managed by a contracted firm called ICF International, which, oddly enough, also has extensive contracts with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.  Go figure." read the rest here