An educational paper on how to co-produce mental health research: Reflections and recommendations from people with lived experience of mental illnesses

Co-produced mental health research is scarce but increasingly conducted. Efforts to develop best practice guidelines are improving too. We aimed to write an educational paper with practical recommendations for researchers who are new to co-producing mental health research. We brought together a diverse team of authors with expertise and extensive experience in using principles of co-production in various stages of mental health research. Within the team, we reflected on, discussed and agreed on key considerations, challenges and recommendations for other researchers to take forward in their research. We describe several examples of how to co-produce mental health research using a set of co-production principles across the research cycle. We agreed that building relationships and sharing power in research with people with lived and/or living experience of mental illnesses can be difficult. This is because of complex factors including deep-rooted systemic issues, e.g. social and economic factors, and inequality perceptions, safeguarding considerations (e.g. emotional distress) and clinician/researcher difficulty in balancing power and safety. Dedicating sufficient time, effort, and resources for everyone to feel safe and breaking down pre-existing barriers to co-producing mental health research is crucial. Individual safeguarding and wellbeing plans for all are recommended. While co-producing mental health research is challenging, it is rewarding and worthwhile. The recommendations in this paper on applying co-production principles across research stages can help others co-produce mental health research. In particular, it offers more examples from qualitative studies and systematic reviews.