Consumers and carers as partners in mental health research: Reflections on the experience of two project teams in Victoria, Australia

Abstract

A successful working partnership in research between a consumer project team from the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council and a carer project team from the Victorian Mental Health Carers Network was forged during their collaborative involvement in an innovative 2-year pilot project funded by the Victorian Government of Australia. This project trialled new ways of capturing consumer and carer experiences of mental health services, and that feedback was integrated into service quality improvement. Towards the end of the project, an external facilitator was used to enable the two teams to reflect on their experience of working together so that their joint story could be shared with others and used to promote further use of this approach in the mental health field. Main findings included the importance of having strong support and belief at leadership levels, opportunities to build the relationship and develop mutual trust and respect, a common vision and a clearly articulated set of values, targeted training appropriate to the needs of the team members, independent work bases, and mutual support to overcome challenges encountered during the project. The experience forged a close working relationship between the two teams and has set the scene for further participation of consumers and carers in research and innovative quality-improvement processes in the mental health field.

Service user's actual involvement in mental health research practices: A scoping review

“…), which was highlighted by Callander et al . (), who found that decisions about methodology were made without involvement of user‐researchers. van Draanen et al .…”

“…In several studies, user‐researchers or potential user‐researchers had participated in research training (Callander et al . ; Croft et al . ; Gillard et al .…”

“…User‐researchers were expected to be ready to collaborate across organizations (Callander et al . ), and most notably, no studies investigated expectations of or to academic researchers.…”

Attitudes of Nursing Students on Consumer Participation: The Effectiveness of the Mental Health Consumer Participation Questionnaire

“…Moving toward more collaborative styles of care and more effectively meeting consumer needs in a holistic way will require system‐wide changes, including a nursing workforce ready for and receptive to consumer participation. Although there is research on staff views (McCann, Baird, Clark, & Lu, ) and that of consumer participants on the experience of consumer participation (Callander et al., ), there is a shortage of research on students' views and surveys of attitudes held by all those involved in mental health care.…”

Sur la contribution des personnes utilisatrices de services de santé mentale en tant que partenaires d’enseignement en psychiatrie

“…Les personnes utilisatrices de services de santé mentale sont ainsi appelées à devenir des partenaires dans l'offre de services (50), par exemple en tant que pairs-aidants (51), des partenaires de recherche (52) et des partenaires d'enseignement (53). C'est ce dernier volet qui faisait principalement l'objet de cet article.…”