— Case studies / Surveys
Documented case studies research.
Abstract
The National Council for Mental Wellbeing, in collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb, has developed a new white paper on evidence-based and innovative practices for developing and providing peer support services for people living with schizophrenia.
This resource examines how peer support programs, led by trained individuals with their own lived experience of serious mental illness, can help address critical gaps in schizophrenia care across the United States. Schizophrenia affects nearly 3 million people in the U.S., and despite decades of clinical progress, many people living with the condition still face fragmented care, limited access to services, and significant social isolation.
The white paper draws on peer-reviewed research and real-world interviews with Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) that have successfully implemented peer support programs. It explores the current landscape of peer support, including regional variability, workforce challenges, funding constraints and opportunities for clinical integration.
It also offers actionable recommendations for health care leaders, policymakers, peer support programs, and individuals and families, covering workforce development, program infrastructure, outreach, outcome measurement and policy reform.
Abstract
This integrative review analyzed the research on consumer involvement in mental health nursing education in the last decade. We aimed to derive the main contents, methods, and outcomes of education using consumer involvement for mental health nursing students. We searched six electronic databases using English and Korean search terms; two authors independently reviewed the 14 studies that met the selection criteria.
Studies on the topic were concentrated in Australia and some European countries; most of them used a qualitative design. The main education subject was recovery, and consumers tended to actively participate in education planning. Moreover, students’ perceptions about education using consumer involvement and people with mental health problems changed positively, as well as their experiences of participating in mental health nursing education. There is a lack of interest in the topic in Asian countries, including Korea. Thus, future studies in Asian countries are needed to conduct qualitative and in-depth explorations of students’ experiences regarding an educational intervention that uses consumer involvement as a tool rigorously designed for mental health nursing education. Consumer involvement can be an innovative strategy to produce high-quality mental health nurses by minimizing the gap between theory and practice in the undergraduate program.
Abstract
Background: Maintaining collaborative research relations is challenging, as shown by a range of personal accounts of researchers with experiential expertise, emerging from reflected lived experiences within medical or social care institutions.
Objective: In contrast, there is a shortage of narratives of researchers without experiential expertise, rendering their specific perspectives largely unaccounted for – a gap that is addressed in this paper.
Methods: The interpretative method of “interactive interviewing” is used to systematically reflect on how two researchers without experiential expertise perceived personal and emotional unsettlement in collaborative projects in the fields of Mental Health (MH) and Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD).
Results: Four cases are presented to illustrate and advocate the value of unsettling encounters in collaborative research. Underlying is the ethical and methodological position that collaborative research is primarily characterized by its potential to unsettle the relations between the people and parties involved. This position derives from the critical autobiography of the disability studies scholar Kathryn Church, and contrasts to the widely held assumption that collaborative research is largely characterized by a set of distinct methods or techniques.
Discussion: Some of the epistemic and methodological gains and challenges of approaching collaborative research as a means to facilitate and reflect on unsettling encounters are presented and discussed in relation to overarching theoretical and normative-ethical arguments.
Community Contribution: This paper purposefully lacks any form of involvement, explicitly focussing on the perspectives and experiences of researchers without experiential expertise in the context of collaborative research relationships.
Abstract
Introduction: Contemporary mental health policy identifies consumers as active participants in all aspects of mental health services from design to evaluation. Consumer researchers should be actively involved in mental health research and contribute to quality service delivery.
Aim: To gain a snapshot of mental health researcher views on strategies for increasing research by or with consumers in mental health through the establishment of an Expert Consumer Researcher Group (ECRG).
Methods: Cross-sectional survey of 41 non-consumer mental health researchers from Australia or New Zealand.
Results: The introduction of an ECRG was considered an effective strategy for linking consumer and non-consumer researchers and providing specialist advice on research design and methodology. The most suitable location for this group was identified as within consumer advocacy agencies (71%), universities (66%) or research funding bodies (66%). Participants rated their likelihood of seeking advice from the ECRG as high.
Discussion: Research participants supported the value of an ECRG. They emphasized the importance of ensuring the group reflected a diversity of views and offered specialized expertise related to the specific topic. The ECRG could benefit both individual researchers and larger research organizations.
Implications for practice: An ECRG could facilitate collaborations with consumer researchers and in turn enhance the quality of mental health research.
Abstract
Barriers to research arise when national ethical guidelines governing the inclusion of consumers in mental health research are implemented at the local level. Equivalent guidelines for research involving carers are not available.
A social science investigation of Australian mental health consumer and carer perspectives on research ethics procedures was conducted in two interlinked stages: (a) a discussion forum with consumers, carers, and lived-experience researchers and (b) indepth interviews with consumers and carers. Data collection and analysis drew strongly on methodological features of grounded theory. Privacy, confidentiality, and stigmatizing ethics procedures were key issues for consumer and carer participants. Recommendations for research practice include the following: considering the impact of information sharing on participants’ relationships and adopting individual-focused approaches to managing research risks.