Organising Mental Health in Scotland

This paper reports the first phase of a research project on mental health policy in Scotland that investigates the way knowledge is mobilised in the policy process. In this first phase of the project, the authors' concern has been to map the organisational domain of mental health policy in Scotland, paying attention to the form and structure of agencies and organisations as well as to the relationships between them. The paper describes a set of organisations in which central government is dominant but notes also a range of organisational forms and functions, and a diversity of sources of knowledge, expertise and information on which they draw. A dense network of linkages between agencies is identified.