Mixed Research Community on Mental health Peer-support – CMR-PASM

Context
Mental health practices are evolving towards the paradigm of recovery, focused on the values and needs of persons living with mental health difficulties, in a partnership approach. Peer support is now recognized as a relevant tool to develop recovery-oriented practices in mental health by national and international incentives.
Despite its expansion in practice, peer-support is not yet considered as an evidence-based practice (Evans et al., 2021). In France, data are even rarer, limiting the comprehension of how peer support may be optimally developed.
Yet, numerous questions are emerging from the community of peer-support stakeholders: beyond the efficacy of peer-support, the question of its power to transform mental health practices towards recovery, as well as facilitators or barriers for its implementation, or its value for mental health training remains to be further studied.

Aim
The aim of the MRC (Mixed Research Community) is to develop, structure and lead a collaborative network including researchers and various stakeholders to:
- Raise research questions about the development of mental health peer-support in France, based on the concerns of various stakeholders,
- Produce reliable data that can be used directly by actors on the ground and institutional decision makers,
- Spread knowledge widely across the community to make it available to people interested in the field,
- Build a resource and documentation base on peer-support.

Method
The MRC follows principles of i) participatory research, ii) evidence-based practice, iii) multidisciplinary research. The MRC includes two research teams (Laboratoire de Psychologie, University of Bordeaux, and the WHO Collaborating Centre, Lille), and representatives of various stakeholders: peer-helpers (in practice or in training), users (ClubHouse Bordeaux), families (UNAFAM), mental health professionals (CH Jonzac), associations and policy makers (ARS Nouvelle Aquitaine).
The MRC will be developed in two levels: 1) a plenary MRC, which will supervise 2) several working groups focused of themes co-build among the plenary MRC.
The MRC will use several collaborative tools, and will be jointly coordinated by a researcher and a peer-helper.

Perspectives
Even if the scope of certain results is at an international scientific level, the goal of the MRC is primarily to provide useful information for the development of peer-support in the specificities of the French cultural context. Information will be largely disseminated through synthesis documents or videos, or any other forms accessible to a wide audience.