Mental health & transdisciplinary teams: A literature review

The following literature review has been prepared to help inform EACH’s development and implementation of community-based and focused transdisciplinary mental health teams. The review is based on the published and grey literatures; with a focus on transdisciplinary teams and transdisciplinarity more generally, as well as inter and multidisciplinary teams and their functioning where a lack of research was evident. The shift from inter or multidisciplinary to transdisciplinary teams was also investigated; however, no publications were identified that specifically examined this issue.

The literature review is structured in order to provide the reader with an introduction and overview of transdisciplinary teams and transdisciplinarity, followed by an overview of how transdisciplinary teams and transdisciplinarity have emerged from interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. This is followed by an examination of transdisciplinary models of care, the management and development of transdisciplinary teams, and, the application of transdisciplinary teams in mental health. The review then considers and identifies what good practice would look like when implementing successful transdisciplinary mental health teams, and concludes with consideration regarding EACH’s approach to mental health transdisciplinary teams.