PERSPECTIVE: Economic and Policy Research Interests Highlighted in the 25th NIMH-Sponsored Mental Health Services Research Conference.

Background: The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) remains committed to addressing real-world challenges with delivering high quality mental health care to people in need by advancing a services research agenda to improve access, continuity, quality, equity, and value of mental healthcare nationwide, and to improve outcomes for people with serious mental illnesses (SMI). The NIMH-Sponsored Mental Health Services Research Conference (MHSR) is a highly productive venue for discussing topics of interest to NIMH audiences and disseminating NIMH's latest research findings directly to mental health clinicians, policy makers, administrators, advocates, consumers, and scientists who attend.

Aims: This Perspective summarizes and provides highlights from the 25th MHSR.

Commentary: Establishing Scientific Rigor and Excellence in Implementation Science Training to Improve the Deployment of Evidence-Based Mental Health Services.

Real-world challenges continue to impede the dissemination, implementation and sustainment of high-quality, evidence-based practices, resulting in too many individuals not receiving the effective mental health care that they urgently need. The field of implementation science is poised to generate new solutions to address this important public health problem. Training a new generation of researchers in implementation science is one solution.

Capacity-building and training opportunities for implementation science in mental health.

This article traces efforts over the past decade by the National Institute of Mental Health, of the US National Institutes of Health, and other US organizations to build capacity for mental health researchers to advance activities in implementation science. Authors briefly chronicle the antecedents to the field's growth, and describe funding opportunities, workshop and conferences, training programs, and other initiatives that have collectively engaged hundreds of mental health researchers in the development and execution of implementation studies across the breadth of contexts where mental health care and prevention programs are delivered to those in need. The authors summarize a number of key initiatives and present potential next steps to further build the capacity for a new generation of implementation studies in mental health.

Commentary: A pathway forward for implementation science in the search to accelerate the delivery of effective mental health treatment and services for youth: reflections on Williams and Beidas (2019).

Over the past several decades, implementation science has emerged as a promising new field designed to reduce the gap between research and practice. One population that has not fully benefitted from recent efforts to implement evidence-based mental health treatment and services are children and adolescents. In the review by Williams and Beidas, the authors provide a thoughtful discussion on where the implementation science field has previously been within the area of child psychology and psychiatry, identified the scientific limitations of prior phases or 'waves' in the historical development of implementation science, and recommend where the field needs to go - by underscoring the importance of developing and testing multilevel, integrated causal theories and mechanism-based approaches.

Blending research and practice: an evolving dissemination strategy in substance abuse.

Substance abuse is a leading cause of death and disability throughout the world. The mission of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is to lead the United States in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction. This charge has two critical components: (a) strategic support of research across a broad range of disciplines and (b) rapid, effective dissemination of research results that can improve prevention and treatment efforts, with potential to inform policy.

Patient relapse in the context of drug abuse treatment.

How do addiction treatment programs integrate the expectation of relapse into drug abuse treatment? This article serves as a thought piece to pose questions rather than definitive solutions. It reflects a distillation of discussions that occurred at the National Institute on Drug Abuse meeting titled "Program Response to Patient Relapse," held on July 15, 2009, along with quantitative and qualitative information about the patterns and types of discharge policies, which factors influence them, and how the culture of drug abuse treatment and the personnel interact with this issue. Some existing data on the discharging of relapsed patients are identified.

Blending addiction research and practice: strategies for technology transfer.

Consistent with traditional conceptions of technology transfer, efforts to translate substance abuse and addiction research into treatment practice have typically relied on the passive dissemination of research findings. The large gap between addiction research and practice, however, indicates that there are many barriers to successful technology transfer and that dissemination alone is not sufficient to produce lasting changes in addiction treatment. To accelerate the translation of research into practice, the National Institute on Drug Abuse launched the Blending Initiative in 2001.

Charting a course for health services research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Through research, we continue to develop and refine an array of safe and efficacious interventions to prevent and treat drug abuse; however, these interventions have not led to widespread improvements in prevention and treatment services in nonresearch settings. In addition, investigator-initiated research rarely examine or refine interventions that practitioners have found relevant and that are widely practiced. To address these problems, the National Institute on Drug Abuse convened a blue ribbon task force to examine its health services research program.