MENTAL-HEALTH TREATMENT TEAMS AND LEADERSHIP - A SYSTEMS-MODEL

Mental health treatment teams are living systems at the group level an d comprise key productive subsystems of organizations providing mental health care. Effective treatment teams, like effective organizations, are anticipatory systems that contain subsystems that model and predi ct future system and environmental conditions and enable responses tha t increase system viability. A systems analysis of treatment teams hig hlights their potential instability due to their tendencies to regress toward dysfunctional partial systems and their active maintenance in nonequilibrium steady states with their organizational and external en vironments. Team subsystems are analyzed from the viewpoints of system processes and also with regard to individuals and their roles. Bounda ry processes are central to effective team functioning, assure constan cy of team membership, and regulate the team's interfaces with its par ent agency and with the external environment. Various causes and forms of disturbed information processing within hierarchical organizations are examined, and their effects at the treatment team level are discu ssed. The conclusion of the discussion focuses on team leadership and how leadership expands upon the concept of the decider subsystem to in clude role and personal factors of the team's leaders, and functions t hat are anticipatory and integrative in nature. Effective leaders must set appropriate thresholds for feedback regulation processes, and bal ance several pairs of seemingly opposing forces, including homeostasis and development, role differentiation and role overlap, and personal accountability and empowerment of others.