Strengthening Review and Publication of Participatory Mental Health Research to Promote Empowerment and Prevent Co-optation

As reviewers, editors, and researchers with lived experience of mental health challenges, addiction, and/or psychosocial distress/disability, the authors have struggled to find an adequate way to address inappropriate or misleading use of the term “participatory methods” to describe research that involves people with lived experience in only a superficial or tokenistic manner. The authors of this article have found that, in their experience, editors or other reviewers often appear to give authors extensive leeway on claims of participatory methods that more accurately reflect tokenism or superficial involvement. The problem of co-optation is described, examples from the authors’ experiences are given, the potential harms arising from co-optation are articulated, and a series of concrete actions that journal editors, reviewers, and authors can take to preserve the core intent of participatory approaches are offered. The authors conclude with a call to action: the mental health field must ensure that power imbalances that sustain epistemic injustice against people with lived experience are not worsened by poorly conducted or reported studies or by tokenistic participatory methods.