The mental health strategy for Europe: Why service user leadership in research is indispensable

Abstract

Recent European mental health strategies and programmes declare service user involvement to be essential in the development and evaluation of policy and services. In light of the announcement in March 2011 by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe of a forthcoming new mental health strategy for Europe, we propose that service user leadership in research is the most effective way of enhancing such involvement and consider what is required to broaden initiatives across Europe.

Keywords:

• views/attitudes of consumers
• mental health policy
• Europe
• service user involvement in research

Acknowledgements and sources of funding

The authors acknowledge financial support from the NIHR Specialist Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health award to the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. This funding source had involvement neither in the writing of this editorial nor in the decision to submit it for publication.

Declaration of Interest: Both FC and DR were invited to present at a WHO/EC-funded conference on service user leadership and empowerment in 2010, and their travel expenses were covered by WHO Europe. Subsequent to the writing of the editorial (and while it was undergoing peer review), FC was invited by WHO Europe to contribute to the drafting of some of the sections of the forthcoming Mental Health Strategy. FC is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Mental Disability Advocacy Center.

Notes

1. We emphasise that there are undoubtedly other countries in which activities are taking place, of which we are unaware; our itemisation of countries should be taken as indicative rather than as authoritative.

2. Readers should be aware that we have not addressed the complex relationship between research controlled by service users/survivors and collaborative research involving service user researchers. While some of the barriers are shared by both kinds of research, there are also significant differences, which we are unable to discuss further here (Telford & Faulkner, 2004).