Mental health consumers and providers dialogue in an institutional setting: A participatory approach to promoting recovery-oriented care.

OBJECTIVE: This brief report presents the preliminary findings of a participatory project, to answer a question raised by stakeholders in mental health services: How can providers and patients create a process for knowledge exchange to support recovery-oriented care? METHOD: Participatory action research (PAR) and narrative phenomenological methodology guided the selection of methods, which consisted of an iterative process between telling stories and dialoguing about personal values related to recovery. The sample consisted of three occupational therapists, a psychiatrist, an academic-clinician, and five consumers of mental health services who were involved in each stage of the research, including design, interpretation, dissemination, and implementation. RESULTS: Significant interpersonal and intrapersonal tensions were named, and conditions for a more sustainable process of knowledge exchange were explored. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The project revealed both the challenges with situating research within an institution (hierarchy of knowledge, power, and vulnerability) and face-to-face dialogue, as well as positive changes in professional attitudes and consumer empowerment, as providers and patients came to understand what was at stake for each other. The project underscored the need for provider-consumer dialogue as a process to explore tensions and values in promoting recovery-oriented care.