There are some guidelines for the membership criteria that represent 360 degree viewpoints and perspectives. But I'm not able to find clear direction on what disciplines are required and what are just preferred specifically for mental health care systems. Even though there are different levels of responsibility (national, state, local and sub-local), are there "must haves" and is there evidence to support these compositions?
The honest answer is: It Depends. In particular it depends upon the community or population you're working with because they will all have different disciplines, stakeholders, and resources available to them. Start by identifying gatekeepers and key stakeholders. You can do unstructured or semi-structured interviews with them to identify more stakeholders or disciplines that are relevant. That said, it's extremely important to have mental health consumers and families included in this group to ensure that those seeking or needing mental healthcare have a voice and can express their needs and perspective. I think you may be asking the wrong question with must haves, because that opinion may vary from community to community. You may want to post that question to some initial gatekeepers or key stakeholders you identify as you work to build a governance and advisory group on mental healthcare. Broadly speaking some areas to think of including are: advocates/advocacy organizations, consumers/people living with mental illness and their families, policy/legislators, mental healthcare providers, directors or administrators of governmental mental and behavioral health related agencies, mental health services and policy researchers, public health (local and national government such as local Dept. of Public Health and CDC).
Regarding tailoring this to your context, for example, I live and work in Georgia, and we frankly don't have specialty mental health providers in clinical psychology or psychiatry in large portions of the state, so critical disciplines in some rural areas are people in faith/the clergy, social workers, or school counselors.
Thanks for your question, Michael. I appreciated Cole's comprehensive answer.
I agree with Cole that it depends on your community contexts and resources. In the past decades, client-driven and client-empowerment recovery models have been used in many parts of the country. It is wise to have clients or clients' family members, plus various mental health professionals (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, psychiatric nurses, licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, etc.) and professionals of related disciplines (e.g., clergy, medical doctors, school personnel, community advocates, etc.) on the advisory board/council.
Cole and Stephen are on the right with the answer to your question. Essentially, during the selection of members for a given councils/boards/committee/workgroup to deal mental health care, the emphasis is not on ""must haves" but on the goals these entities want to accomplish. So, for example, if the Board's main goal is to determine if individuals with HIV infection are receiving appropriate mental health care you would have to ensure that all members on that Board have substantial experience in this particular area. Selecting a psychologist, for example, because he or she has prior formal training (e.g., graduate training, internship) in mental health would not help if that psychologist does not have vast experience in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders specifically applied to patients/clients diagnosed with HIV (or AIDS). If the Board plans to deal with a significant number of HIV/AIDS patients/clients from the African American, American Indian, Asian, and Hispanic, that Board must ensure that some members on the Board will have expertise in this particular area. Perhaps the following chapter may be relevant here:
Paniagua, F. A. (2000). Multicultural issues in treating clients with HIV/AIDS from the African American, American Indian, Asian, and Hispanic populations. In I. Cuellar & F. A. Paniagua (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural mental health ((pp. 249-278). New York, NY: Academic Press.
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