# Mental Health Research Network III

> **NIH NIH U19** · KAISER FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE · 2020 · $344,930

## Abstract

Summary:
The Mental Health Research Network conducts practice-based mental health research in large healthcare
systems serving over 25 million patients in 16 states. The network has the potential to dramatically improve the
speed, efficiency, relevance and impact of mental health clinical and services research. A primary aim of this
network is to have large-scale data infrastructure available for rapid analysis.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems quickly changed from using mostly in-person
clinic visits to telehealth visits that use phone or video to care for patients. However, we do not know how the
change to telehealth affects people with mental health conditions. This supplemental application uses the
infrastructure of the Mental Health Research Network to examine how changing from office visits to telehealth
visits disrupts care of people with mental health conditions in three healthcare systems. We want to
understand how this change to telehealth may affect people differently, including people of racial or ethnic
minority groups, patients who speak a language other than English at home, children or teenagers, older
adults, people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, people living in rural areas, or people living in areas with
low income or education. We also want to understand how these changes affect the severity of someone’s
anxiety or depression, whether they keep taking their mental health medications or continue going to therapy,
whether they visit the emergency department or need to be hospitalized in the mental health unit, or whether
they have increased risk to attempt suicide.
Understanding the effects of transitioning to telehealth visits will help us understand who is, and is not, as able
to access and engage in healthcare in future times of crisis - when going to the doctor’s office in person may
not be safe - so that we can offer those patients more help and support. In addition, this research has broader
implications regarding who benefits and who needs more support as the field of behavioral health care
continues to rapidly transition to more regular use of telehealth services moving forward.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10160625
- **Project number:** 3U19MH121738-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** KAISER FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE
- **Principal Investigator:** GREGORY E. SIMON
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $344,930
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-09-23 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10160625

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10160625, Mental Health Research Network III (3U19MH121738-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10160625. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*