A case study of the organisation of research knowledge by systematic reviews within the mental health care field.
BACKGROUND
Our aim was to explore how systematic reviews of the effects of complex interventions within the field of organisation of mental health care organised research knowledge.


METHODS
We looked up references included in 14 mental health care reviews in the database Epistemonikos to examine overlap between reviews. We classified topic concordance between study reports and reviews as similar, narrower, broader or other topic to indicate how well the research knowledge was organised.


RESULTS
We examined 182 comparisons between the theme of study reports and reviews. In 100 (55%) of the 182 comparisons, the review had a broader theme, 18 (10%) narrower, 34 (19%) similar and in 30 (16%), the review's theme was classified as 'other'. The content analysis indicated that there existed (inconsistent) overlapping of study reports between different topics.


CONCLUSIONS
Within the field organisation of mental health care, there exists some unclear and inconsistent organisation of current knowledge. This may diminish the validity and reliability of systematic reviews. It is important that review authors take care in defining the review question precisely, conduct thorough literature searches, consider each study's hypothesis, disciplinary tradition and context, and if necessary, examine which other reviews have included a study in question.
Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway.
Louise
L
Forsetlund
Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway.
Astrid
A
Austvoll-Dahlgren
Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway.
Marit
M
Johansen
Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway.
Ingeborg B
IB
Lidal
Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway.
Jan
J
Odgaard-Jensen
Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway.
Gunn E
GE
Vist
D006302:Health Services Research / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008603:Mental Health; D009938:Organizations; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012196:Review Literature as Topic
Information management; knowledge management; mental health; review systematic