In recognition of February being psychology month, one of our longest-serving psychologists, Research Director, Grant Harris answers a few questions. Dr. Harris likes to say he started as a research psychometrist on April Fool’s Day, 1974.

Why is Psychology month special for your Research team?

GH: All members of our Research team have worked as front line psychologists or psychometrists. All except our administrative assistant, who for many years was also the assistant for the psychology and social work departments. So we all feel a strong connection to clinical work and the profession.

What’s so special about psychology and psychologists?

GH: Psychologists are the mental health discipline whose members are most likely trained as scientists. Not all psychologists work as scientists, of course, but each one on our Research team does. In that role, those psychologists are working to better understand the causes of the disorders clients face. The scientist-practitioner model means psychology has something unique and indispensable to offer a modern mental health organization.

Tell us more about that unique contribution.

GH: Psychologists are trained in measurement and drawing valid conclusions from data they collect. These might sound simple but can be difficult to do well in real-life settings. They are also trained to determine best practices from the scientific literature—data collected by others. Psychologists are trained to apply scientific data to new situations. And most are trained to design and implement programs to accomplish specific purposes. These skills are fundamental to science, but you can see how essential they also are to clinical practice. The scientist-practitioner model is about increasing understanding of the causes of health issues and applying that knowledge to improving systems to achieve better health for clients. This way of thinking about clinical practice as the application of science means that data and evidence (as opposed to authority or status) are pre-eminent in decision-making. Knowledge expands as time passes, requiring updates in treatments and care. And, of course, we must routinely measure what happens with our patients, and how they do after receiving our services, if we hope to improve their health.

How has your understanding of mental health and illness changed over the years? And what will be important challenges in the next decades?

GH: When I started years ago, scientists in our field generally under-estimated the importance of genes and their interaction with the environment in human psychological development, including mental health. Most in the field now realize that, as a science, psychology needs to more fully unite with biology and other life sciences if it is to fully understand human behavior, including mental health and illness.

The most important challenge in mental health now is not a lack of knowledge about how to help. There's a solid body of evidence on interventions that could greatly improve the lives of almost all our clients. And there's knowledge about effective clinical training and implementation. The problem is that many mental health professionals and administrators are unaware of this knowledge or do not use it effectively. It takes know-how to canvas the literature to determine what is currently evidence-based practice, then turn that information into a practical treatment program, then develop clinical manuals to guide service delivery, then train clinicians in the skills required to deliver the program, then put in place measures of therapeutic fidelity and client improvement to support clinical supervision, then gather data on client outcomes, then analyze the data on improvement and outcomes together to figure out which program components need to be strengthened or replaced. But making better use of all this know-how to ensure delivery of interventions already known to be effective is the biggest and most important challenge psychiatric hospitals now face.