FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE - IMPLEMENTING THE BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL MODEL IN CLINICAL AND RESEARCH ACTIVITIES IN THE BEER-SHEVA MENTAL HEALTH CENTER

INTRODUCTION: The Beer Sheva Mental Health Center is the second largest mental health hospital in Israel and provides acute and chronic in-patient services for the entire population of the Southern District of Israel, from Ashdod to Eilat (about 1.2 million people) from adolescence to the elderly. The outpatient services include a variety of regional specialty services such as bipolar, eating disorders, anxiety, neuromodulation, gender-oriented, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sleep, dual diagnosis, geronto-psychiatry and post-traumatic stress disorder clinics and various rehabilitation day-care services. The emergency department provides 24 hour services with a 30-bed intensive care ward alongside it. The center offers up to date bio-psycho-social treatment and rehabilitation care, provided by academically-approved clinical social workers, psychologists, nursing staff and psychiatrists, all of whom are involved in under-graduate Mental Health Education (affiliated to Ben-Gurion University) and post-graduate Residency Training Programs (for each of the above disciplines). Despite the routine workload vis-a-vis patients and families and the busy teaching schedule, the center regards research as a lynch-pin of health care provision. In this issue of "Harefuah", clinical research and study reports by physicians, psychologists, clinical social workers and basic scientists from the Mental Health Center are presented. The manuscripts relate to quantitative and qualitative studies with patients and animal models, therapeutic approaches and scientific theories, which represent a sample of the ongoing clinical research activities.