ABSTRACT
Co-production in mental health is a relatively new approach to designing and delivering mental health services, which involves collaboration amongst professionals, persons in recovery, and their caregivers to provide services. The aim of this protocol paper is to detail the implementation and evaluation of a co-produced workshop series named Broken Crayons. Collaborating with an early intervention program for first-episode psychosis, the study team and peer volunteers generated a co-production framework based on their experience of co-producing 11 workshops. This paper also outlines a protocol to evaluate Broken Crayons, a psychoeducation workshop series co-created and co-delivered by mental health professionals, persons in recovery, and their caregivers. Indicators on personal recovery, mental wellbeing, community integration, etc., are included as outcomes. Two-tailed, paired t-tests will be used to compare pre- and post-workshop survey data. Focus group discussions will also be conducted to gather subjective experiences of participants of the Broken Crayons workshops. Cost-savings of co-production by Recovery Colleges are discussed. The implications of using co-production to foster citizenry in persons living with first-episode psychosis are discussed in the context of social causation and social drift theories. Taken together, we argued that co-production is not just a passing trend, but a moral imperative for inclusive and equitable mental health service design and delivery.
Subject(s)
Mental Health Services , Psychotic Disorders , Humans , Psychotic Disorders/therapy , Psychotic Disorders/psychology , Outcome Assessment, Health Care , Caregivers , Peer GroupABSTRACT
For better or worse, there exists a power differential between psychiatrists and their patients in mental healthcare. Co-production was proposed to be the "third space" to offer truce between the professional-patient tension in mental healthcare. In Singapore, co-production is a new, but growing, approach to mental healthcare service delivery. In this commentary, we argue that co-production is not just a novel way to provide service, but a moral imperative. Recovery Colleges and its adoption in Singapore is discussed in some detail to highlight how co-production may be applied in practice.
