Hypothesis processing as a new tool to aid managers of mental health agencies in serving long-term regional interests

Mental health planning is partly a political process, involving the articulation of the long-range interests of a regional community, formation of consensus among key people and the appropriate investment of authority, power and responsibility. Conflicts between the short-term self-interests of planners and the long-term general interest usually arise. This paper claims that it is feasible to increase the expected number of cases in which a region's longer-term interest is served without radical changes in existing planning processes or ideologies. The means for doing this are new kinds of information systems that serve planners as tools to increase their awareness about assumptions, hypotheses and problem representations. The conceptual and technological bases for developing such systems stem from progress in artificial intelligence in the direction of hypothesis-processing algorithms. The proposed application to mental health planning is described. Arguments are presented to show how the use of such tools would increase the likelihood that longer-term regional interest are served.