To ground and legitimize practices in mental health service (Dutch: GGZ), evidence-based practice has been used for decades. An important commitment to meeting our ethical obligation to provide care to the best of our ability to those in need. Yet criticism also swells because the evidence-base turns out to be not at all comprehensive and inclusive.
Methods play a crucial role in this: the choice of methods largely determines which evidence is produced and taken seriously, and thus also which information is left out of consideration. KOG is committed to bringing the unheard voices in and around the mental health community to be heard in science. We recognize the formative role of methods and research on mental health practices, paving the way for multi-voicedness in mental health care.
How does KOG see the relationship between research and practice?
Mental health care is inherently qualitative
Spiritual suffering and therapeutic experiences come to us in the form of stories we hear, images we see and everything we feel with our bodies. Qualitative methods are ideally suited to examine this complex, ambiguous reality, which is open to many interpretations. These methods have developed greatly in recent decades and offer many opportunities for good research. Opportunities that are currently underutilized.
Quantitative methods are too dominant
In current thinking, speaking and acting in the Dutch mental health care, methods that require quantification are chosen by default. If qualitative research is used at all, it is often only as a supplement within a quantitative framework. This is a serious problem for science and practice, because in a process of far-reaching quantification, much is lost of the subtle and complex world of experience of patients and practitioners. The therapeutic process of making meaning, interpreting, grasping and misunderstanding is thus distorted. The diversity of practice experiences in care and support is not adequately captured. Thinking about quality in, for example, residential counseling, day care, home care and other forms of assistance becomes highly simplified. What is not counted does not count in the worldview of science and university.
We can do something about that
More and more researchers are recognizing the importance of qualitative research as an alternative to, or to complement and deepen existing research. Many mental health professionals struggle with the fact that quantitative data are poorly translatable into qualitative practices. There is dissatisfaction among critical students about the one-sidedness of a course that presents statistics and experimentation as “the science.
What is the KOG doing for more and better qualitative research in the mental health sector?
We want to improve science and practice
By encouraging scientists to expand their arsenal of research methods to include qualitative methods. By inviting many stakeholders in the mental health field to participate in scientific research in their own way, for example, by sharing their specific experiences with and visions of good care and critically collaborating on how research is used. By continuing, as researchers, to constantly adapt our methods to clinical realities and the questions and experiences that arise within them.
We aim for a strong increase in qualitative methods in mental health care
Not because we want to propagate one specific method, but because we need many different methods for good research. Because only when you know and master different types of research can you properly weigh which method does justice to what (or whom) is being researched. We want to provide methods to explore and deepen. We want to enthuse and bring together. We provide a platform where we learn together and inspire each other.
How does KOG see Qualitative Research?
Qualitative research is polyphonic and reflexive
The premise of qualitative research is that every voice is worthy of being heard. The first step toward understanding (Verstehen) is to listen openly, with awareness that the other person does not necessarily speak the same language as you. Not only the investigated, but also the researcher listens and understands from their own frame of meaning, and thus has an important share in what is heard or not heard. This double hermeneutics requires open listening to different voices speaking about a phenomenon, but also a critical look at one’s own understanding, at the assumptions and presuppositions held by the researcher himself. This requires a reflexive researcher, who is aware of himself, his own context, and the influence of methodological choices, content selections, and categorization on the practices the researcher describes.
Qualitative research aligns with the essence of therapeutic work
Qualitative research does not begin with the method of data collection or analysis. Qualitative research begins in a thinking, or ontological and epistemology views of how the world is put together and shaped by how people move in it. Therefore, qualitative research requires critical reflection not only on what is being researched but also on who is researching.
And precisely in this, qualitative research connects so substantially to the mental health field. Mental care requires speaking and listening: an open mind, an unbiased ear, and an ethical stance in which all voices are fundamentally worthy of being heard. Therapists also re-form a bond, a look, a conversation in every contact. Here, technique and systematics are attachments to shape the ethics of unbiased listening and exchange.
The KOG facilitates thinking and doing
The KOG not only helps explain and navigate the attachments (methods, techniques), but also the thinking that precedes them. A quality evidence-base requires thinking and doing, researching and interpreting, thinking and rethinking.
Therefore, this platform provides space for thinking and doing. We invite members to seek each other out and engage in conversation. Exploring together to take a stand. To do reflexive research and look with each other for blind spots. To always keep listening and learning. To always remain curious about the story in that moment. Just like therapists in the mental health system.