To what extent are patients involved in researching safety in acute mental healthcare?

We know that inpatient mental health settings are not safe. By getting patients to help us research and develop interventions to improve safety they are more likely to work. We searched for articles and papers which described doing this. By using a matrix we were able to understand how many research studies involved patients. We found 52 studies, but few really involved patients in the entire research and intervention development process. Most of the research focus was on helping staff to use less restrictive interventions like restraint and seclusion. Only four studies really treated patients as equals in terms of decision making in the research process, and about half of the studies involved patients in only one of the possible three stages of research. There have been lots of ways patients have been asked to be involved in research but we really need to improve the way we involve patients in order for our knowledge about patient safety and the interventions that follow from this to be truly co-produced.