Psychiatric Services

Psychiatric Services, established in 1950, is published monthly by the American Psychiatric Association. The journal focuses on issues related to the delivery of mental health services, especially for people with severe mental illness in community-based treatment programs. Each month, Psychiatric Services features research reports with results that have practical applications in the diverse settings and integrated systems where today's practitioners work. The journal has long recognized that providing high-quality care involves team collaboration among a variety of professionals and that people with serious mental illness are served by many systems. Authors of research reports include psychiatrists, psychologists, pharmacists, drug and alcohol treatment counselors, social workers, nurses, economists, and professionals in related systems such as the criminal justice and welfare systems. Monthly columns keep readers up to date on important developments in areas such as emerging best practices, law and psychiatry, integrated care, and global mental health care reforms. Issues also feature news and letters to the editor. Every member of the treatment team will find Psychiatric Services a valuable source of information.

Psychiatric Services focuses on the delivery of behavioral health services in organized systems, such as public mental health systems, correctional systems, and health maintenance organizations. Under health care reform, systems of care are changing to maximize quality and accessibility and lower costs, and care settings services are becoming more integrated to better serve patients with complex needs. Clinicians and administrators look to for research on how to deliver evidence-based treatments, to take an integrated “whole-health” approach to care, and to better engage their patients—especially those with severe and persistent mental illnesses, who are often served by multiple systems.

To visit Psychiatric Services online, please go to http://ps.psychiatryonline.org

The April issue of Psychiatric Services is now online. Below are some highlights from the issue.

The April issue of Psychiatric Services is now available. For 15 years, print and TV news coverage of painkiller addiction has framed the epidemic as a criminal justice issue, not as a public health crisis. People with mental illness who were diverted from jails to special mental health courts had lower rates of rearrest—even two years after they completed the court program. The Department of Veterans Affairs was found to outperform private-sector health plans by a wide margin on seven key quality-of-care indicators.

Howard H. Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, where he is the Director of the Mental Health Systems Improvement Collaborative.