How to Enhance the Quality of Mental Health Research: Service Users’ Experiences of Their Potential Contributions Through Collaborative Methods

Abstract

The voices of service users are often silent in mental health research issues. A Norwegian mental health research organization, however, recognizes the importance of involving service users as coresearchers, and it has initiated a training program in research design and methodology intended to empower them as active participants in research projects. In this study, we use qualitative methods to explore how coresearchers with mental health service user background experience their participation as coresearchers and how they experienced attending an academic training program in research methodology. We invited 12 coresearchers with service user background to be participants in the study. We used focus groups as our data collection method, transcribed the group discussions verbatim, and analyzed the transcriptions using qualitative methodology. We then took the preliminary analyses back to the participants for discussion, auditing, and reanalysis. We identified three core themes that represent important coresearcher functions around which the participants developed a consensual understanding: the advocate for usefulness, the brakeman, and the interpreter. There is increasing political will to involve service users in research. Our findings explore how the service user coresearchers experience their potential functions and quality enhancing contributions after having taken part both in a research training course and actual research projects.

Keywords:

• Empowerment
• Focus groups
• Mental health research
• Qualitative methodology
• Service user involvement in research

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the group of MoodNet coresearchers for their participation in this study. We declare no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or publication of this article. The authors received funding for this study from Helse Førde and MoodNet. One important intervention explored in this study is coined “The Research School for Service User Coresearchers.” This 5-day training program in qualitative methodology and theories of science was developed by experienced researchers from MoodNet in collaboration with faculty from the Group for Qualitative Research on Mental Health at the University of Bergen. The research school was funded by MoodNet.