The training program provides individualized educational and research experiences for trainees selected from diverse backgrounds (e.g., psychology, economics, psychiatry, social work, and public health) with differing levels of research skills and policy and practice knowledge. The program curriculum provides rigorous, interdisciplinary training, didactic course work, and significant opportunities for students to conduct mental health research projects. Given their diverse backgrounds and skills, trainees work with the co-directors to formulate individualized two-year research and study programs.

Each program incorporates the following curriculum elements:

First, required courses provide training in the fundamentals of health care economics and financing, mental health policy, research methodology, and quantitative methods; elective courses provide additional perspectives and advanced training in each trainee=s area of interest. During their first year as trainees, students select courses appropriate to their backgrounds and interest in three core competency areas: health economics, mental health policy and services, and statistical and methodological techniques. These courses introduce trainees to the interdisciplinary nature of mental health services research, its methods and procedures, and will serve to guide the development of trainee research projects. Since trainees come to UC Berkeley with broadly diverse experiences in the mental health field and with varying competencies in research, their required course work differs. However, all trainees enroll either in the Introduction to Health Economics or, if they have completed at least one semester of microeconomic theory, Advanced Health Economics. Similarly, mental health policy course work varies according to background: Mental Health Policy, for novices, or more advanced policy and organizational electives for those with the fundamentals. All trainees, in addition, enroll in the Health Services Seminar offered during fall semester and the NIMH Research Seminar offered during the spring.

Second, program trainees have the option of engaging in program fieldwork. Field work can provide students with important opportunities to apply course work knowledge to authentic practice and research situations in mental health policy and services.

Third, at the core of the trainees= experience is supervised research. Although trainees may work in their first year on research projects conducted by their faculty mentors, in the second year they undertake original research projects, implementing the project designs formulated in year one. Each trainee is matched with a faculty member with appropriate expertise who supervises the research project. In the project workshop and NIMH seminar, trainees review their research progress, share ideas, and obtain guidance from project faculty. They learn the utility and the limitations of econometrics and model building in the field. In the spring semester of the second year, students finalize their research papers and present a seminar based on their research to project faculty and interested others.

On completing their two-year programs, trainees not only are competent researchers and analysts but also have the capacity to apply the results of their work to the formulation of mental health policy and practices. Through the experience of working in multi- disciplinary groups, trainees gain an appreciation of the insights provided by different disciplines. Moreover, through their work in various project activities, trainees develop an understanding of the interrelationships among research activities along the spectrum from mental health service delivery to issues of organization and finance. Actual participation in multi-disciplinary mental health services research projects is an effective approach for developing and refining the skills needed in mental health services research.

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