Online Symposium
Virtual
IAMHRF Online Symposium: What do we mean by evidence? How choosing the right methods can improve the real-world relevance of mental health research
Too often, research produces interventions that are difficult to scale. This is frustrating for researchers, funders, and critically, those poised to benefit from these interventions. So, how can we bridge the implementation gap?
At the heart of this question is the challenge of how to connect research evidence to real world settings - that is, how to produce actionable evidence. We’ll be exploring this in depth through a series of online symposia inspired by The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Transforming Mental Health Implementation Research. We’ve already looked at how systems thinking can transform implementation, and next, we’ll be exploring what we mean by evidence in mental health research.
Join us on 6 February 2025, as session chair Dr Niall Boyce and a stellar line up look at how using different approaches can contribute to building a meaningful evidence base that is relevant to the real-world.
Dr Gracelyn Cruden will kick us off with an overview of what we mean by experimental and non-experimental methods and how they can be used to inform decision-making. We will then hear practical examples of different methodologies and consider their potential for building a more meaningful evidence base:
- Professor Stefan Gold will explore how trials can support implementable innovation,
- Dr Jessica Schleider will reflect on ‘Uplift the Web’ and the value of megastudies,
- Professor Signe Hald Andersen will discuss how natural experiments can guide policy responses,
- Dr Jasper Feyaerts will explore phenomenology in psychosis - and how this qualitative method can improve diagnosis and treatment.
We’ll then be joined by co-Commissioners, Dr. Beth McGinty and Dr. Matthew Eisenberg who will reflect on how different forms of evidence are treated in research and funding, what this means in the context of evidence hierarchies, and how studies could be designed using the most appropriate methods given the question at hand.
You can find The Lancet Psychiatry policy brief on the Commission here.
*Mental health equity will be a cross-cutting theme across our symposia – because connecting evidence to the real world means considering how local structural and social determinants of mental health play out in different contexts. Further, efficacy and effectiveness studies are often done in populations who face minimal barriers to participation and access – resulting in a ‘voltage drop’ at the point of scaling.