The challenges of reflexivity and research-practice collaboration: The case of the implementation of a new first-line mental health services
The evaluation of the implementation process of a new mental health service in a heath and social services center demonstrates that this process must be accompanied with the creation of spaces of reflection amongst the team of workers in order to create positive conditions for implementation. Organizational complexity is an issue that needs to be taken into account. The role of research-practice collaboration in this process of implementing changes has been documented in order to better understand the challenges of opening spaces of reflection within an organization. While the spaces of reflection scheduled in the initial planning did not materialize, the ongoing interaction between research and practice allowed the mechanisms of reflection of this team to renewed themselves in an unexpected way in the midst of a process of transformation. That was made possible thanks to the spaces of collaboration that were put in place, to the mechanisms of knowledge translation carried out by the epistemological posture, to the creation of alliances and the cycle operation method.