The Boston Mental Health Community-Academic Partnership

In 2005, NIH for the first time developed a grant process by which the research was to be based on the principles of Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPR). CQI, with funding from the Mass. DMH, sponsored several meetings of the key consumer/family advocacy groups (M-POWER, PAL and NAMI) to build consensus for mental health research priorities in Boston. As a result, CQI in collaboration with Alisa Lincoln, PhD of Boston University School of Public Health as the primary investigator, applied for a grant to develop, the Boston Community-Academic Mental Health Partnership (B-CAMHP) . The grant was awarded in April 2006, one of very few CBPR grants awarded in that cycle. It is also the first of its kind in the United States, to formally include mental health consumers as drivers of the research process.

This partnership brings together consumers, family members and academic based researchers to develop community based participatory action research in mental health. The “community” has been defined as adults struggling with severe and persistent mental disorders and children struggling with severe emotional disturbance in Boston. This is an area of critical importance for while there are many academic mental health researchers in Boston, few avenues exist for consumers and family members to be a genuine part of the research process. Our long term goal is to create a mechanism through which community members can inform and participate in all aspects of the research process; from question generation, to the design and conduct of research studies, the interpretation of results, and dissemination. The specific aims of this proposal are: 1) to develop the B-CAMHP; 2) to conduct a pilot study of consumer perspectives of psychiatric emergency care; and 3) to identify and develop future research proposals and sustainability efforts for the B-CAMHP.