Partnerships in Family Mental Health and Substance Use Research

Family mental health and substance use research is increasingly moving beyond traditional models in which families, communities, and service users are viewed primarily as research participants or recipients of interventions. Approaches such as co-design, co-production, participatory action research, community-engaged research, and patient- and public-driven research seek to build partnerships among researchers and interest holders, including children, parents, caregivers, professionals, organizations, and communities—to generate knowledge and develop solutions together. Evidence and emerging consensus suggest that involving interest holders as active research partners can strengthen research rigor and the relevance of its findings. However, meaningful partnerships are complex: questions remain about whose knowledge is valued, who holds decision-making authority, how expertise is integrated, and how responsibilities, resources, and benefits are shared. Further research is needed to identify the approaches and conditions that support ethical, equitable, and sustainable partnerships and contribute to public mental health research and practice.This Research Topic aims to critically examine the development, implementation, and impact of research partnerships in family mental health. It aims to bring together perspectives on how researchers, families, people with lived experience, professionals, organizations, and communities collaborate across the research and intervention lifecycle. Contributions may explore practical and ethical challenges—including power-sharing, expertise, representation, responsibility, compensation, governance, and sustainability—and examine when, how, and under what conditions partnerships create meaningful value. The Research Topic seeks to identify practices, methodological innovations, and critical reflections that can support more equitable, inclusive, and impactful research and intervention development.To gather further insights into partnerships that shape family and public mental health research and practice, including in the context of substance use, this collection welcomes contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Models of collaborative research, including participatory action research, community-based participatory research, citizen science, Open Innovation in Science, co-design, co-production, co-implementation, and co-evaluation.• Roles, expertise, power, and equity, including lived-experience leadership, peer research, children and young people as co-researchers, representation, researcher positionality, decision-making, governance, authorship, compensation, reciprocity, and culturally responsive partnership.• Evaluation of partnership processes, quality, outcomes, and impact, including frameworks, measures, and approaches to reporting engagement and its intended and unintended effects on families, communities, research, organizations, services, and systems.• Partnerships in interventions, services, and systems change, including strengths-based, trauma-informed, and prevention-oriented approaches; participatory implementation science; knowledge translation; and policy or organizational change.• Building and sustaining meaningful partnerships, including resources and compensation, training, institutional support, administrative requirements, relationship-building, and the costs and benefits of collaboration.• Creative and emerging approaches, including arts-based, narrative, visual, digital, and hybrid methods, as well as international collaborations and contexts.The editors of this collection are particularly interested in receiving Original Research, Community Case Study, Policy & Practice Review and Perspective article type submissions. Topic editors: Jean Lillian Paul, Joanne Nicholson, Claire Wilson, Thomas Mackie Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/87563/partnerships-in-family-mental-health-and-substance-use-research