Case Management Of The Mental Health Services In Colleges And Universities

According to the core-elements of case management in schools, the researcher of this study designed interview outlines and interviewed psychological workers at nine colleges in Hubei Province in the current study. Then the qualitative methodology, Grounded Theory, was used to analyze how the case management carried out among these interviewed psychological workers from mental health centers at colleges. The purpose of this study was to reveal the current situation and shortcomings of case management in mental health centers of colleges, and provide some suggestions for carrying out the case management in the mental health centers of colleges.By analyzing and organizing the open and axial coding, the researcher of this study evaluated the case management carried out among these interviewed mental health centers at the nine colleges, based on three elements of case management:case management teams, case managers, and the process of case management. The results showed that there was no real case management among these nine colleges.Compared to the mature case managements at some colleges, the gaps of the case management at these nine colleges were the incompleteness of the case management team composition and the narrow service targets of team cooperation. The gap of case managers was demonstrated by that:no team members can carry out the case manager’s function individually among inter-department team cooperation of the mental health centers at these nine colleges. The gap of case manager process was shown by that: the function was obviously insufficient when comparing the existing stage of team cooperation among these health centers and the corresponding stages in case management. In addition, the necessary planning and final evaluation stages were missing in the team cooperation among these mental health centers at the nine colleges.By presenting and analyzing the power operation situation of team cooperation among the mental health services at the colleges, transcribing the interviews verbatim, as well as repeated reflections on the first level (open) coding and the second level (axial) coding, the researcher of this study finally identified the third level (selective) coding and developed a grounded theory of power operation in the team cooperation among mental health services at colleges.Based on this research, the researcher proposed four measures for universities to carry out the case management in their mental health services, which were optimizing professional network of college mental health centers, promoting horizontal communication between departments by leading groups of college mental health service, carrying out trainings on the case management knowledge and skills, promoting policies by practice research and education authorities.