PERSPECTIVE: Forecasting the Future: Lived Experience and the Transformation of Mental Health Services Research in the United States

Over the past two decades, consensus has emerged in WHO and other international organizations regarding the foundational role and importance of integrated service users – individuals with lived experience of mental health services and systems – into mental health clinical and services research. At present, support and infrastructure in the United States (US) lags behind many other high-income, Anglophone and Western European countries. This Perspective, originally part of the 2022 NIMH Mental Health Services Research Conference’s “Forecasting the Future” plenary panel, makes the case for systematic and coordinated investment in the policy, funding, infrastructure and organizational change that would be necessary to substantively strengthen participatory and co-produced mental health services research in the US.