As patient/survivor movements continue to challenge reductionist biological views of mental health and psychosis, there is rising skepticism toward psychiatric medications and growing interest in withdrawal and alternatives. This new perspective also calls for a rethinking of reductionist assumptions about psychiatric medications themselves. General medical patient experience with collaborative decision making for other conditions has broad implications for psychiatric drug withdrawal, and by recognizing psychiatric medications as psychoactive substances, addiction science also suggests a central role for social context and therapeutic common factors in medication withdrawal response. New understandings of madness and medications support an emerging reconsideration of what constitutes the very definition of “health,” where measuring the absence of disease symptoms gives way to a systems-based focus on self-management, social relationships, and adaptability.

Public participation and survivor research in mental health are widely recognized as vital to the field. At the same time, contributions of patient collaborators can present unique challenges to determining authorship. Using an unresolved dispute around research contributions to the American Psychiatric Association’s Psychiatric Services journal, authorship and contribution are addressed. Recommendations are suggested to prevent dilemmas and achieve responsible research credit inclusion, especially among researchers with different backgrounds and asymmetric power relations. Researchers and publishers can prepare proactively for conflict through consensus on authorship criteria, prior agreements around author inclusion, arrangement for third party dispute resolution, transparency in communication and contracts, notification to prospective publications of pending disputes, a contributor-guarantor model of contribution, journal editor “expressions of concern” when authorship disputes go unresolved, and expectation of conflict as generative.

Substantial contribution and accountability are widely accepted as foundational criteria for crediting scientific work. Misunderstandings of authorship criteria and improper authorship designation remain widespread in published research however, and the resulting authorship conflicts have few formal avenues for resolution and leave early career and less experienced researchers disadvantaged. Recommendations are suggested to prevent authorship designation problems, respond more effectively when conflict arises, and achieve proper impartial resolution around questions of research credit, including:: use of prior agreements on authorship, notification to prospective publications of pending disputes, a "contributor-guarantor" model of contribution, third party dispute adjudication, journal 'expressions of concern' where authorship disputes go unresolved, and researcher expectation that when anticipated and well-prepared for, conflict can be generative to scientific collaboration

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