User Involvement in mental health care teaching

The emerging evidence-base forrecovery-orientation includes the urgent call for a partnership approach topsychiatric practice, service developments, research and education. The role ofthe lived experience in teaching is an essential component of initiatives aimedat implementing recovery-orientation.

User involvement in teaching mental healthprofessionals has become a common feature of mental health training curriculain English speaking countries. Data indicate that this form of teaching is feasibleand acceptable to both teachers with and without a lived experience and to studentsof different professional backgrounds. Current research however mostly concernstrainings of mental health nurses. Types of user involvement vary considerably froman active role in the development of curricula and training materials as wellas teaching to more passive and collaborative approaches. Published datamainly focus on students’ response showing beneficial outcomes, such asattitudinal changes, reduced anxiety and increased confidence in communicatingwith patients as well as insight into users’ experience of services and needsfor improvement. Only few studies highlightthe perspective of the users as teachers with more positive, e.g. empowerment, than negative experiences, e.g. voyeurism. Clear expectations and specifictraining and supervision have been identified by educators as conducivefactors, while tokenistic and unprepared inputs lead to problematic situations. Further research needs to define adequate outcome measurements for different contextsand subjects under study as well as methods that are able to address multipleperspectives as well as long-term effects.