The true integration between the different ecological levels of mental health practice evidence remains a pending task. While much scientific literature continues to be produced on the effectiveness of interventions without considering the challenges of large-scale implementation, research on public mental health policies sometimes is done ignoring the idiosyncrasies and needs of practitioners and service users.
At the methodological level, the internal validity of research has been traditionally prioritized, while there are growing voices from the social sciences encouraging analysis of the socio-historical aspects that have led to current mental health approaches. All these contrasts between research lines coexist within a scenario of growing demands, both at the level of care pressure and the appearance of new problems and fields of intervention.
In this Research Topic, we would like to integrate topics usually addressed in the public mental health literature such as fairness, social justice, empowerment and participation with those more typically researched at the micro levels such as clinical effectiveness and its covariates, integrating all levels of evidence in a framework that thoroughly includes the social context, and the approach to users as experts on their own lives, moving away from top-down into bottom-up approaches.
Therefore, in this Research Topic, we accept works that include both components: elements related to the interventions carried out to improve the mental health of people together with elements related to the implementation of the latter in the general picture of mental health policies.
The Guest Editors would like to express their profound gratitude to Dr. Medina for his valuable work in initiating this Research Topic and contributing to it.
The true integration between the different ecological levels of mental health practice evidence remains a pending task. While much scientific literature continues to be produced on the effectiveness of interventions without considering the challenges of large-scale implementation, research on public mental health policies sometimes is done ignoring the idiosyncrasies and needs of practitioners and service users.
At the methodological level, the internal validity of research has been traditionally prioritized, while there are growing voices from the social sciences encouraging analysis of the socio-historical aspects that have led to current mental health approaches. All these contrasts between research lines coexist within a scenario of growing demands, both at the level of care pressure and the appearance of new problems and fields of intervention.
In this Research Topic, we would like to integrate topics usually addressed in the public mental health literature such as fairness, social justice, empowerment and participation with those more typically researched at the micro levels such as clinical effectiveness and its covariates, integrating all levels of evidence in a framework that thoroughly includes the social context, and the approach to users as experts on their own lives, moving away from top-down into bottom-up approaches.
Therefore, in this Research Topic, we accept works that include both components: elements related to the interventions carried out to improve the mental health of people together with elements related to the implementation of the latter in the general picture of mental health policies.
The Guest Editors would like to express their profound gratitude to Dr. Medina for his valuable work in initiating this Research Topic and contributing to it.