From Systems Thinking to Systems Science: Enhancing Mental Health Implementation Models

The increasingly complex and dynamic realities of public sector human services (e.g., mental health, education) have proven challenging to the conduct of translational research and implementation efforts. Common responses to this complexity are to simplify key processes or theoretical models by standardizing, reducing or “controlling” their scope (e.g., by representing recursive processes linearly), often with insufficient attention to context.

While public mental health, education, and service systems researchers tend to think in systems terms, current methods and models often fail to aptly consider unique contextual factors, stakeholder needs/interests, and non-linear processes (interactions, dynamics, networks, feedback loops) inherent in complex systems over time. Understanding the mechanisms and processes of multilevel factors on youth wellness and achievement as well as school/community system capacities requires a multifaceted and integrative conceptual framework with corresponding methodology.

Viewing human service organizations such as schools as complex adaptive systems may enhance our understanding of public mental health and improve translational research and implementation science across disciplines. We are suggesting an evolution of sorts in public health, prevention science, and education from systems thinking to systems science—an approach that justly considers context and complexity; is community-centered and stakeholder-driven; and utilizes mixed methodinquiry and analysis. Although this requires critical examination of existing activities, it allows us to build upon those approaches in order to more accurately conceptualize and measure factors within a complex, adaptive system over time. Thus, we seek to enhance existing implementation models by integrating frameworks and applying system science methods that capture the multilevel and multifaceted nature of public mental health implementation in complex school/community systems.

Systems science can offer insight into various aspects of research translation and implementation science via organizations/systems, particularly systems aimed at implementing strategies (e.g., interventions, programs, services policies, processes) and improving or changing the system itself. Enhancing existing models with systems science can assist implementation researchers in accounting for the complex and adaptable nature of systems (vs. reducing or controlling) while providing the flexibility (vs. standardization) necessary for diverse contexts and populations.

Altogether, this paper presentation will:

-Briefly review implementation & implementation science in schools/communities

-Provide a conceptual foundation for understanding systems thinking & systems science

-Discuss challenges associated with current implementation models & methods (design, measures, analysis) in complex systems

-Build upon existing implementation models common in prevention science & school mental health & provide illustrative examples of systems science applications (e.g., system dynamics models/ simulations, network analysis)

-Discuss implications & provide recommendations for training, research, policy, & practice