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Patient Involvement in Psychiatric Research

Guest Editors:

Kirsten M. Fiest, PhD, University of Calgary, Canada
Angela King, Patient Partner, United Kingdom
Iain Lang, PhD, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Kristine Russell, Patient Partner, Canada


BMC Psychiatry called for submissions to our Collection on "Patient Involvement in Psychiatric Research."

Recognition of the benefits of collaboration between mental health professionals and patients or members of the public (including families, informal-care providers, and citizens) in research, or when planning or providing care, has grown. In the past ten years, research in these areas has highlighted both the benefits and challenges of patient engagement and participatory approaches in many areas of health and medicine.

(We use the term “participatory” as a shorthand for a cluster of related terms including patient and public involvement, participatory medicine, co-production, and engagement in research.)

Psychiatry and mental health have often been at the forefront of these developments. To explore, evaluate, and develop participatory approaches to mental health research and services, BMC Psychiatry launched a collection centered on patient engagement and participatory mental health research and care in all its forms.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Kirsten M. Fiest: University of Calgary, Canada

Dr. Kirsten Fiest is an Associate Professor of Critical Care Medicine, Community Health Sciences, and Psychiatry at the University of Calgary. She is also Director of Research and Innovation in the Department of Critical Care Medicine and Associate Scientific Director of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health. Dr. Fiest received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Calgary and completed post-doctoral training in neuro and psychiatric epidemiology at the University of Manitoba. Her research program focuses on advancing the science of patient and family-centered critical care research. She has published over 175 peer-reviewed publications.

Angela King: Patient Partner, United Kingdom
Angela King has been an active patient advocate for over 25 years. She has taken part in a wide range of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) activities in research, including membership of funding committees and advisory groups, extensive reviewing of funding applications, PPI roles in several studies, and collaboration in the production of papers.  She has served on conference organizing committees (on one as Chair), has produced various reports and has written several articles. Angela has also undertaken several roles in health charities, including Trustee and CEO, and has personal experience of long-term illnesses and caring, including end of life care and on-going mental illness care.

Iain Lang: University of Exeter, United Kingdom

Dr. Iain Lang is a researcher and teacher at the University of Exeter Medical School, where he works as part of the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaboration – South West Peninsula (NIHR PenARC). He has a background in sociology and public health and his interests include co-production, patient and public involvement in research, implementation science, and knowledge mobilization. His research focuses primarily on dementia and social care.

Kristine Russell: Patient Partner, Canada
Kristine Russell is a patient and family advisor, and for over 5 years has taken a keen interest in patient quality improvement, collaborative patient engagement in research and health-related quality of life in healthcare settings and beyond. She is a part of several national organizations as a patient advisor, including Alberta Health Services, CanChild, University of British Columbia’s Action on Sepsis Research Cluster and Sepsis Canada, a multidisciplinary research network where she serves as the Marketing & Communications Program Manager.

About the collection

BMC Psychiatry called for submissions to our Collection on "Patient Involvement in Psychiatric Research."

Recognition of the benefits of collaboration between mental health professionals and patients or members of the public (including families, informal-care providers, and citizens) in research, or when planning or providing care, has grown. In the past ten years, research in these areas has highlighted both the benefits and challenges of patient engagement and participatory approaches in many areas of health and medicine.

(We use the term “participatory” as a shorthand for a cluster of related terms including patient and public involvement, participatory medicine, co-production, and engagement in research.)

Psychiatry and mental health have often been at the forefront of these developments. To explore, evaluate, and develop participatory approaches to mental health research and services, BMC Psychiatry launched a collection centered on patient engagement and participatory mental health research and care in all its forms.

Topics of interest included, but were not limited to, the following aspects of participatory approaches in mental health research and care: 

  • Experiences with participatory approaches, whether on the part of patients, professionals, or others
  • Effectiveness of participatory approaches, with consideration of what “effectiveness” means in this context
  • Perceived and actual responsibilities of mental health professionals and others when involved in participatory work
  • Ethical, political, and practical challenges of participatory work of this type, including the ways these relate to issues of inequity and bias as well as situations in which participation is opposed, contested, or rejected

Image credit: Valerii Honcharuk / stock.adobe.com

  1. Co-production involves researchers, practitioners and people with lived experience working in a collaborative manner, with shared power. The potential benefits of co-production are well documented. However, th...

    Authors: Josie F.A. Millar, Nina Higson-Sweeney, Tom A. Jenkins, Erin F. Waites and Sophie Minns
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:906
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. The involvement and engagement of people with lived experience is considered increasingly important in health research. A growing corpus of literature on the involvement of people with lived experience of ment...

    Authors: Melanie Trimmel, Antonia Renner, Nilufar Mossaheb, Fabian Friedrich, Alexander Kaltenboeck, Josef S. Baumgartner, Raphaela E. Kaisler, Zsuzsa Litvan, The Voice Consortium and Barbara Hinterbuchinger
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:899
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. This article describes a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) led creative workshop space held within a clinical trial of a talking therapy for distressing voices (AVATAR2). PPI adds significant value to clini...

    Authors: Oliver Owrid, Leonie Richardson, Stephanie Allan, Amy Grant, Sarah Gogan, Nicholas Hamilton, Francis Yanga, Nicola Sirey, Suzy Syrett, Philippa Garety, Tom Craig, Moya Clancy, Vanessa Pinfold, Lucy Miller, Thomas Ward and Clementine Edwards
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:807
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. Cognitive impairment is common in chronic schizophrenia patients. The purpose of this study was to explore the efficacy of Shen-based Qigong Exercise (SBQE) in improving the cognitive impairment of stable schi...

    Authors: Hui Shen, Anbei Lian, Yiwen Wu, Jinjing Zhou, Yan Liu, Liping Zhu, Yi Zhang, Zhenghui Yi, Xiaodan Liu and Qing Fan
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:796
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Childhood emotional maltreatment, non-suicidal self-injury and depression are prevalent among adolescents with mood disorders. While existing model indicated that childhood emotional maltreatment, functions of...

    Authors: Qian You, Ying Ou, Na Meng, Linlin Guo, Yinghua Ye, Xing Xie, Wei Yuan, Qiaoling Liao and Juan Chen
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:748
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Adequate sleep and rest are essential for patient recovery; however, lack of sleep has become a common problem faced by Chinese patients during hospital stays. Reduced sleep is often associated with a higher r...

    Authors: Fan Zhang, Xin Wang, Chunyan Zhang, Kaiyan Xu, Huameng Xu, Qing Chen and Chunguang Liang
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:696
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is one of the most disabling mental health problems worldwide. The Recovery Model emphasizes peer support to empower individuals with MDD, improve self-management, and patients'...

    Authors: Xandra Gonzalez-Garcia, M. Lucia Moreno-Sancho, Patricia Roa-Díez, Yolanda Caceres-Tejeiro, Sarah-Louise Auvergne Flowers, Concha Gómez de Montes, Miquel Bennasar-Veny, Mauro García-Toro and Aina M. Yañez
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:639
    Content type: Study Protocol Published on:

  8. Mental health settings are increasingly using co-facilitation of educational group interventions in collaboration with patient partners and service users. However, despite promising results, limited informatio...

    Authors: Tatiana Skliarova, Mariela L. Lara-Cabrera, Hege Hafstad, Audun Havnen, Sverre Georg Saether, Øyvind Salvesen, Jonas Vaag and Terje Torgersen
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:615
    Content type: Research Published on:

  9. Adverse events (AEs) are commonly reported in clinical studies using the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA), an international standard for drug safety monitoring. However, the technical lang...

    Authors: James S. W. Hong, Edoardo G. Ostinelli, Roya Kamvar, Katharine A. Smith, Annabel E. L. Walsh, Thomas Kabir, Anneka Tomlinson and Andrea Cipriani
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:532
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. This article begins by locating Patient and Public involvement ((PPI) historically and argues that ‘mental health’ was a special case. This movement held promise for service users in repositioning them as rese...

    Authors: Diana Rose and Peter Beresford
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2024 24:52
    Content type: Research Published on:

  11. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) provide clinicians with information about patients’ perceptions of distress. When linked with treatment and diagnostic registers, new information on common mental healt...

    Authors: Martin Brattmyr, Martin Schevik Lindberg, Jakob Lundqvist, Stian Solem, Odin Hjemdal, Frederick Anyan and Audun Havnen
    Citation: BMC Psychiatry 2023 23:804
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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We welcome submissions in the form of research articles, case reports, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, among others. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Patient Involvement in Psychiatric Research" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.

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