Participation for mental health service development in China: Conditions, challenges, facilitators, and outcomes

This study analyzes a participatory project to develop peer support services for people with serious mental illnesses (SMIs) in China. Drawing on interviews with psychiatrists, social workers, service users, and a family caregiver, it examines the conditions, challenges, facilitators, and outcomes of participation in a paternalistic context unfamiliar with such approaches. Participation was made possible by local calls for change, personal trust, and institutional endorsements. Challenges included service users' difficulties understanding technical materials, reticence in group settings, technology barriers, and limited institutional support. To address these, professionals adjusted meeting formats and communication styles, offered emotional and material support, and helped service users engage with project content. Participants recommended including government officials and expanding the team's diversity in future efforts. The process produced a culturally responsive manual integrating diverse stakeholder perspectives, particularly those of service users. It also fostered emerging shifts in professional reflexivity, service user empowerment, and mutual relationships, setting the stage for second-order change. However, participation remained shaped by structural inequalities and lacked sufficient institutional backing for long-term transformation. This case highlights the potential and limits of participatory processes in hierarchical systems and offers strategies to make them more inclusive and transformative for disabled populations in China and beyond.