NIMH Mental Health Services Research Conference - MHSR 2018

NIMH sponsored the nation’s premier research conference focused exclusively on mental health services, the 24^th NIMH Mental Health Services Research Conference (MHSR). The conference promotes areas of high priority services research that align to NIMH's strategic research priority #4 and identifies opportunities to improve the health and well-being of people with mental illnesses. This year, the MHSR boasted record numbers of registrants, in-person and virtual attendees, and submitted abstracts.

Attendees included researchers, clinicians, federal, state, and local stakeholders, mental health advocates, people with lived experience, and media. Keynote speakers included nationally recognized behavioral health innovators: Judge Steve Leifman, J.D. Administrative Judge for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, and Jürgen Unützer, M.D., M.P.H., M.A., Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, and Founder of the AIMS Center.  The conference also featured Kamilah Jackson, M.D., M.P.H., Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Child and Adolescent Services at Community Behavioral Health and the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, City of Philadelphia as a plenary speaker and discussant. Presenters capitalized on the theme, “What’s the next big thing?” by highlighting seminal research findings and helping to identify areas of greatest need for people with mental illnesses.  The meeting featured scores of symposia, papers, and posters that highlighted the field’s most impactful research.

The MHSR meeting was co-chaired by Michael C. Freed, Ph.D., EMT-B and Denise Juliano-Bult, M.S.W. from the NIMH; Rinad Beidas, Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania; and Michael T. Compton, M.D., M.P.H. from the Columbia University and the New York State Office of Mental health.

A video recording of this meeting is available to the public on the NIMH YouTube channel .