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Background: Doctors with a history of mental health or substance use challenges face barriers accessing treatment and are difficult to recruit for research. This makes understanding their experiences challenging, yet essential. Overcoming barriers to research participation among unwell doctors is critical to advancing their overall health and wellbeing. Methods: A qualitative interview study of 21 allegedly impaired doctors in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand who were subject to regulatory processes relating to their health. Based in an interpretative phenomenological paradigm, this paper examines participants' motivations for participation in this study and their reactions to participating. It highlights wider implications for sensitive research involving doctors and marginalised groups. Results: Participants were strongly motivated to participate in our research for their own benefit (desire to be heard, catharsis, and empowerment) and to benefit others (to change the system, and to avoid other doctors experiencing what they experienced). Careful planning and communication of unique legal risks fostered a trusting researcher-participant relationship. To assist other researchers undertaking sensitive qualitative research with vulnerable participants, we describe our research protocol, challenges, and successes in detail. Conclusions: Despite ethical concerns about research risk, researchers can and should pursue qualitative research into the experiences of under-represented groups, including allegedly impaired doctors. Without involving them in research that examines issues directly impacting on them, we may be inadvertently perpetuating the barriers and stigma that also hinder them from accessing treatment and support. This also deprives us of knowledge that can be used to improve doctors' health. This paper has broader relevance for anyone doing research with doctors, people in vulnerable positions, people disempowered by institutional or social systems, people who are stigmatised or shamed, and people who have experienced trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, lead agencies and consumer movements emphasise the need for high-level research participation in mental health. However, evidence suggests that people with lived experience tend to be recruited as subjects rather than as active agents in research, or are consulted in tokenistic ways. Although participatory research has the potential to rectify epistemic disparities, few studies have grappled with how to move from exclusion and tokenism to high-level research participation. This paper describes a qualitative co-evaluation of a co-produced model of research partnership, Raising the Bar, which involved deliberate establishment and facilitation of six participatory research teams, comprising 28 lived experience and 'conventional' mental health researchers. Findings indicate that the theoretical elements of the model set the bar high from the outset, supporting research teams to address inconsistencies in knowledge about participation. It also provided researchers with the competencies and resources to undertake participatory research in egalitarian team structures, and to negotiate new forms of non-traditional research outputs - thereby challenging whom research might be for and how it might be made accessible. Finally, the model shifted collective meanings about research, lending credibility to participatory practices, which came to be seen as essential for meeting the needs of affected communities. Nonetheless, systemic barriers to participatory research remain, and need to be recognised and acted upon to promote a culture that supports high-level research participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring constructions of mental health in the perinatal period among Indian immigrants can be challenging. This article describes the use of visual methods, photo elicitation, free listing and pile sorting, as an adjunct to face-to-face interviews to understand the constructions of perinatal mental health among Indian immigrants in Australia. The benefits and challenges of using these methods and modifications made during the research are explained. The modifications resulted in a broader understanding of terminology used by the Indian community. Incorporating visual methods as an adjunct to interviews when discussing perinatal mental health with Indian immigrants is effective and using multiple methods enhances the richness of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background : Young people spend a large proportion of their time in school, which presents both risk and protective factors for their mental health. A supportive school culture can promote and protect good mental health by creating experiences of safety and belonging amongst staff and students. In this qualitative study, we seek to explore whether a participatory action research (PAR) approach is an effective way to promote and improve student mental health. Methods : Participatory action research is an approach in which people collaboratively research their own experience: the researched communities become co-researchers of their own experiences in a specific context. We will work with four secondary schools in the UK to develop PAR projects. In each school, a group of 2–4 staff and 6–8 students will work together to develop a shared understanding of their school culture and to introduce activities or changes to make the culture more supportive of student mental health. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the PAR approach through i) a review of school documents pertaining to mental health (e.g., policies and Ofsted reports), ii) interviews with staff members (n = 40), parents (n = 8) and students (n = 24–40) before and after the PAR intervention, iii) observations and reports of the PAR group meetings and iv) interviews with members of the PAR groups after the PAR intervention. Discussion : We anticipate that our research findings will advance knowledge on effective methods to develop a positive school culture that will contribute to the improvement of young people's mental health and well-being. We will seek to identify the mechanisms through which school culture can have a positive impact on mental health and develop a logic model and a school culture toolkit that can be utilised as a resource to inform public health interventions to promote mental health in a range of educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]