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My name is Debbie Mayes and I am writing as someone with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder who is also a researcher. This article is about service user research ‐ a growing trend in research for service users to be employed and openly identified as a service user as well as a researcher. I am currently a service user researcher at the Spectrum Centre for Mental Health Research at Lancaster University, but in the past I have also worked for the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and the Institute of Psychiatry, both in London.

Debbie Mayes describes how she has gradually worked out a new meaning to life and a new way of living after 20 years of mental illness, and the importance of art, as well as supportive friendships, in the process. This article is based on a talk she gave at the Get a Life! conference in Bexleyheath on 24 June 2004.

When Debbie Mayes went with a group of arts—loving service users to visit two sculpture parks, their reception could not have been more different. Here she describes what happened, and why the traditionally exclusive arts world needs to do much more to be truly socially inclusive.

This paper reports on a prospective study of 44 cases of alleged abuse of vulnerable adults referred under a joint vulnerable adults policy. The authors examine attitudes to policy, special training and joint working, re‐abuse, continuing risk and the outcome of legal proceedings. The implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations made.

This index covers all issues between February 2005 (Volume 9, Issue 1) and November 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 4). Numbers in bold refer to yolume, numbers in brackets refer to issue, with subsequent numbers to pages.