Open AccessBalancing Accessibility and Selectivity in 21st Century Public Mental Health Services: Implications for Hard to Engage Clients
Author(s) -
Amy Blank Wilson,
Stacey L. Barrenger,
Casey Bohrman,
Jeffrey Draine
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of behavioral health services and research/the journal of behavioral health services and research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.713
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1556-3308
pISSN - 1094-3412
DOI - 10.1007/s11414-012-9307-x
Subject(s) - mental health , gatekeeping , health psychology , public health , health informatics , service (business) , psychology , public relations , applied psychology , business , medicine , nursing , marketing , psychiatry , political science , advertising
This research highlights the importance of expanding examinations of service accessibility for hard to engage client populations to include assessments of individuals' ability to gain entrance to services and the system's ability to meet the service needs of particular client populations. The results of this research provide a framework to support these examinations. The increasing levels of selectivity and targeting of mental health services to particular client populations found in this study raise fundamental questions about the goals of service accessibility in 21st century public mental health services generally, and for hard-to-engage clients particularly. These findings also point to the need for examinations of the eligibility criteria and gatekeeping mechanism that are used to target services to particular client populations to determine if they are working as intended and to assess what impact these mechanisms have on hard to engage clients' ability to gain entrance to needed services.