Mental health nursing research: the contemporary context

While the need to develop and conduct research has been prominent in mental health nursing for some time, the current funding climate in tertiary institutions has created even more pressure for research outputs. The Research Assessment Exercise is well ingrained in UK institutions, New Zealand is about to enter the second round of the Performance-based Research Funding model, and Australia is committed to a Research Quality Framework. There is much to learn from nursing departments in those countries that have already been part of the process. This paper will present a content analysis of what mental health nursing research is currently being published in nursing journals and discuss the implications of the research assessment exercises on its future. Those mental health nursing articles sampled in the study revealed a shift beginning towards more consumer-focused research was occurring but that there was a need for more research into the effectiveness of specific mental health nursing interventions. Most of the articles also reported on small-scale research. It concludes that research needs to be more clinically orientated and less profession-orientated. It also suggests a need to focus on larger-scale studies possibly situated within a collaborative research programme. These programmes need to be more collaborative both cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary.