Consumer Evaluation of Mental Health Services
(CEO-MHS) Project

• Viney et al 2004 CEOMHS Final Report [pdf 890kb]
• Outcomes [pdf 19kb]

These webpages have been developed by Trevor Dowson and David Williamson with support from the management team.

CEO-MHS is a three-year Australian Research Council / Illawarra Health funded project to develop a new way of evaluating mental health services, reflecting the views of consumers.

The CEO-MHS project team includes mental health consumers working in partnership with academic and student researchers at the University of Wollongong.

The aims of the project are:

• to develop genuine collaboration between established researchers (University based) and new researchers (consumers) through consumer input, consumer validation and consumer's collection of data throughout the research process
• to empower consumers through "credible" research
• to develop consumer constructed instruments to evaluate mental health services
• to develop a model of "CEO-MHS"
• to trial these instruments and this model in an Illawarra Health mental health service as a demonstration site for other health services

To achieve these aims, the project has adopted these strategies:

• consultation with consumers at several local mental health services
• employment and training of researchers who are also consumers
• conducting focus groups and interviews with mental health consumers – getting their views on their experiences of using mental health services
• maintenance of communication and information flow within the team
• liaison with community groups and mental health service staff
• development of a structure for supervision and support within the team
• presentation of progress (for example at conferences) for feedback and comment
• review of literature related to evaluation, with a focus on i) general models of evaluation, ii) mental health evaluation, and iii) consumer participation

This research is significant and innovative because:

• it attempts to redress the power imbalance between academic researchers and mental health consumer researchers
• consumers on the project team actively participate in all aspects of the research such as conducting interviews, analysing data and contributing in the decision making processes.

For further information or any comments on this project please contact:

Email:    Dr Lindsay Oades
Phone:  +61 2 4221 3694