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Objective: The involvement of people with psychiatric disabilities in research and service evaluation has traditionally been rare, especially in the construction of outcome measures. This study documents a collaborative process with consumers from 2 Portuguese community mental health services in the construction of the Capabilities Questionnaire for the Community Mental Health context (CQ-CMH). The measure is inspired by Nussbaum's capabilities approach and aims to measure consumers' capabilities when supported by the community mental health services. Method: Focus groups with 50 consumers from 2 programs generated data about their gains from and goals for participation in the programs. A Steering Committee-comprising 3 consumers and 2 researchers-analyzed the data, generated a list of items, sorted them according to Nussbaum's list of capabilities, and developed a rating scale. To check face validity, the questionnaire was tested with 15 consumers. Results: The collaborative process led to the transformation of traditional research roles, the promotion of empowerment to participants, the ecological validity of the results, and a cultural adaptation of Nussbaum's list to the context of the study. The resulting CQ-CMH is composed of 104 items organized by 10 capabilities, and 1 open-ended question about service improvements. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: The capabilities approach and the collaborative process undertaken both support the exercise of choice and control by people with psychiatric disabilities. The capabilities measure-constructed by consumersmay be used as an outcome measure in service evaluation. The questionnaire will undergo further testing of its validity and psychometric qualities.

This article is based on empowering settings research and has a twofold objective: to propose an adaptation of the empowering community settings framework to community mental health organizations practice to foster recovery and community integration; and to discuss how the adapted framework is a relevant tool to challenge community mental health transformation at multiple levels of analysis. The current study was anchored in a larger qualitative research project. It used a case study approach, with 8 in-depth interviews with diverse participants from one community mental health organization. The adapted model proved useful to guide transformational practice in community mental health programs and for evaluation of organizational empowerment and multilevel community-oriented interventions. Suggestions and implications for future research are also presented.

Objective: The purpose of this article is to offer a theoretical review on community based research, namely about collaborative processes and qualitative participatory methodologies, and to present an application of this framework to the research design. Method: It is provided a review on community-based research methodology, university-community partnerships, and is described the qualitative participatory methodology used in one collaborative study. Conclusion: following the partnership guidelines for collaborative community-university research, we highlight the participatory and qualitative process that intended to develop a measure of user's capability gains fostered by mental health community based organizations.

O estudo relata a experiência viven-ciada pelas autoras numa Unidade de Cirurgia Vascular de uma Instituição Governamental.Enfatizam a importância da relação de ajuda a um grupo específico de clientes, alicerçadas no modelo de Carkhuff.No desenvolvimento do estudo, valorizam as ações da enfermagem na tentativa de maximizar os efeitos positivos da relação de ajuda.