Involving people with experience of mental health problems
People with direct experience of mental health problems have expertise and knowledge that can be invaluable when planning a project or putting research plans into practice.
The Mental Health Research Network supports studies that involve people with mental health experience, and, if pertinent, their family members. There are different ways in which research teams can involve the people who ultimately benefit from their studies and trials, and we can offer advice about the best way to do this.
Our hub teams support, and can put you in touch with service users and carers who are willing to act as consultants, advisors, steering group members or researchers, or you can contact our two centrally-based organisations, Service Users in Research and FACTOR (Families/Friends and Carers Together in Research).
The MHRN has produced a Mental health researchers' Toolkit for involving service users in the research process. This offers practical guidance to researchers about different ways of involving people with experience of mental health problems in their studies and trials. It includes templates of forms, agreements and related documents that can be adapted and customised by researchers. You can download the whole Toolkit document (including the templates) in Word, or download each of the templates as a separate Word document on the Toolkit page on this website. The Toolkit is an open source document, which means anyone can customise, adapt and use the templates and do not need to credit the authors or the MHRN.
We have also produced Guidance for Good Practice for both research teams and people with experience of mental health problems who plan to work together on studies and trials, and you can download a copy on this page.
People with experience of mental health problems and their family members who get involved in research projects as an advisor or consultant should be paid for their time and efforts. The MHRN has prepared a comprehensive policy about payment for people involved in research project. This is primarily a guide for people with experience of mental health problems, but may also be a useful resource for research teams. Download the policy on the page.
page last updated 9 January 2012