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The purpose of this paper is to consider the benefits of service users contributing to university teaching and having opportunities to present at a conference, both for student learning and clinical development objectives as well as for the service users themselves.

With reference to current policies and good practice guidelines, the article reflects on the experiences of both the students and the service users in relation to the literature and the events that led to the People in Control Conference.

Students valued the experience in terms of developing knowledge and insight into different techniques to facilitate both receptive and expressive communication. Students also had opportunities to think about their own perceptions of disability. Service users have gained in communication confidence and competence as well as getting opportunities to have their voices heard.

Increased opportunities for service users have cultural and clinical benefits for all involved.

The purpose of this paper is to explore student experiences of learning from mental health service users and carers.

In total, 30 clinical psychology trainees and ex-trainees took part in an online survey (n=21) or focus group (n=9). Responses were analysed using interpretative thematic analysis.

A number of themes were identified. There were two pre-conditions of learning: valuing the teaching and emotional arousal. Participants’ learning experiences were characterised by cognitive and meta-cognitive processes: active learning, reflection, increased attention and vivid memories. Furthermore, participants might have a meta-cognitive experience of having learned something, but being unsure what that something was. Participants reported learning about the lives of service users, about themselves and about the wider societal context for people with mental health difficulties.

In order to facilitate learning students should value the input of service users. This allows them to contain and use the emotional arousal the teaching produces. Furthermore, leaving students with a feeling that something has been learned but not being exactly sure what that has been may facilitate students seeking out further opportunities for service user involvement.

Few studies have explored the process of learning from mental health service users and carers. In the current study, the emotion aroused in participants was primary. Furthermore, a new meta-cognitive experience, namely, the experience of having learned something, but not being sure what has been learned, has been identified.

The notion of mental health service user involvement in curriculum design and delivery has become commonplace over recent years. However, concern has been expressed that the rhetoric has not matched the reality. In particular, service user involvement has tended towards either tokenism or over‐sensitivity to the point of near inertia. By contrast, this paper describes a project that took a pragmatic approach and was designed to make involvement in curriculum planning, design and delivery meaningful and worthwhile for service users, students and educators alike. The paper has two principal objectives. In the first instance, it outlines the strategy for involvement that was used to inform curriculum design and delivery at the University of Abertay Dundee. This was grounded in the academic literature. Second, it provides an evaluation of this strategy based on practical experience and identifies some of the difficulties that must be overcome to work in a collaborative manner. In so doing, it examines some of the common concerns of educational staff, service users and students in relation to service user involvement. In conclusion, we provide recommendations for educators seeking to involve mental health service users in a meaningful manner in both the design of training programmes for mental health workers, and in their delivery.

This paper reports outcomes from a holistic, recovery‐based, user‐led group training for people with DSM‐IV bipolar disorder. Drawn from professional therapies and personal experience of the illness by the user‐researcher, the training was delivered over 12 weekly sessions. Using a case‐study approach, an experimental design incorporated pilot (eight participants), main study (five) and control groups (six). Self‐report scales measured mood, coping, empowerment and quality of life pre‐, post‐ and six months post‐training. Semi‐structured interviews noted individual change within the same time frame. Interviews with mental health professionals, medical note analysis and user‐researcher observations also informed the study. Findings from self‐report questionnaires indicated that participants experienced improved mood stability, symptom severity, coping and quality of life and greater empowerment. Out of the six controls, two indicated slight but slow recovery, four continued to use poor coping skills, and two of these four experienced major relapses.

With service user led training becoming more popular in the training of mental health workers, little attention seems to have been paid to how the trainers themselves experience this and the effect it has on them. Here Shaun Johnson, who has worked as the facilitator of a service user led training organisation and is a service user trainer himself, gives an overview of the issues and difficulties faced by service user trainers and how their lives could be made so much easier if unintentionally created problems could be avoided.

Around the UK, a number of strategies are being employed to expand the availability and increase the accessibility of psychological treatments for anxiety and depression. Recommended interventions include supported self‐help programs based on CBT principles such as computerised cognitive behavioural therapies (CCBT) for mild‐to‐moderate depression, phobia, and panic. This paper seeks to describe innovative third sector, service‐user led CCBT clinics commissioned within Greater Manchester.

The paper describes how the project was initially set up, how the services are managed, how they work, and the impact of these services on the population they serve.

The CCBT clinic achieves a high throughput of service‐users, including more than one‐third accessing the service through self‐referral. Intake and outcome measures suggest that CCBT service users are representative of both the local population and those accessing increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services for common mental health problems. For those engaging with the CCBT service, outcomes are equivalent to those reported in NHS‐based demonstration IAPT services. Service users highly value the service offered including the computer‐based programs and the support offered by paid and voluntary staff.

Roll out of this effective service model is recommended.

This paper has described a successful third‐sector, user‐led, CCBT self‐help clinic offering a Tier‐2 service for anxiety and depression that meets local needs. This will be of interest to service users, providers, and commissioners who want to develop similar services.

The purpose of this paper is to question whether the emphasis placed within translational research on a linear model of innovation provides the most effective model for managing health technology innovation. Several alternative perspectives are presented that have potential to enhance the existing model of translational research. A case study is presented of innovation of a clinical decision support system. The paper concludes from the case study that an extending the triple helix model of technology transfer, to one based on a quadruple helix, present a basis for improving the performance translational research.

A case study approach is used to help understand development of an innovative technology within a teaching hospital. The case is then used to develop and refine a model of the health technology innovation system.

The paper concludes from the case study that existing models of translational research could be refined further through the development of a quadruple helix model of heath technology innovation that encompasses greater emphasis on user-led and open innovation perspectives.

The paper presents several implications for future research based on the need to enhance the model of health technology innovation used to guide policy and practice.

The quadruple helix model of innovation that is proposed can potentially guide alterations to the existing model of translational research in the healthcare sector. Several suggestions are made for how innovation activity can be better supported at both a policy and operational level.

This paper presents a synthesis of the innovation literature applied to a theoretically important case of open innovation in the UK National Health Service. It draws in perspectives from other industrial sectors and applies them specifically to the management and organisation of innovation activities around health technology and the services in which they are embedded.

Service user involvement is called for at every level of NHS delivery in the United Kingdom (UK). This article describes a model of service user participation in the development of mental health nurse curricula in a UK university. Using a research model of participatory action research, the Participation In Nurse Education (PINE) project has now become mainstream in the mental health branches at the university. Service users led the design and implementation of the teaching sessions and led the data collection and analysis. Research participants were the service user trainers and the student nurses who were involved in being taught in the early stages of the project. The benefits of the work to both trainers and students are identified as well as some of the difficulties.

Steve Gillard and Estelle Stacey of Slough User‐Led Consultation (SULC) describe the particular benefits of people with experience of mental health problems undertaking research if the service users being interviewed are to feel able to talk freely and openly about their views and experiences of services