Methodological challenges in the use of focus groups with people with severe mental illness.

Rosana Teresa Onocko-Campos,Erotildes Maria Leal,Catarina Magalhães Dahl,Alberto Rodolfo Giovanello Díaz,Octavio Domont De Serpa Junior

doi:10.1590/0102-311x00187316

Abstract

This study addresses the practical, methodological and ethical challenges that were found in three studies that used focus groups with people with severe mental illness, in the context of community mental health services in Brazil. Focus groups are a powerful tool in health research that need to be better discussed in research with people with severe mental illness, in the context of community mental health facilities. This study is based on the authors' experience of conducting and analyzing focus groups in three different cities - Campinas, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador - between 2006-2010. The implementation of focus groups with people with severe mental illness is discussed in the following categories; planning, group design, sampling, recruitment, group interview guides, and conduction. The importance of connecting mental healthcare providers as part of the research context is emphasized. Ethical issues and challenges are highlighted, as well as the establishment of a sensitive and empathic group atmosphere, wherein mutual respect can facilitate interpersonal relations and enable people diagnosed with severe mental illness to make sense of the experience. We emphasize the relevance of the interaction between clinical and research teams in order to create collaborative work, achieve inquiry aims, and elicit narratives of mental health users and professionals.

Highlights

In the past three decades, we have observed a growing interest regarding service users’ perspectives to better understand medical systems, public health policies, as well as the illness experiences of users and their needs [1,2,3,4]
This study presents the practical, methodological and ethical challenges that were found in three studies that used focus groups with people with severe mental illness, in the context of community mental health services in Brazil
We address the authors’ experiences of developing three different studies (Table 1), informed by the theoretical framework of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform [54,57] and the interpretative paradigm [7,9], in which focus groups were conducted with people with severe mental illness in community mental health services in three Brazilian cities: Campinas (São Paulo State), Rio de Janeiro and Salvador (Bahia State)

Summary

Introduction

In the past three decades, we have observed a growing interest regarding service users’ perspectives to better understand medical systems, public health policies, as well as the illness experiences of users and their needs [1,2,3,4]. This change has been accompanied by an increasing acceptance of qualitative methods in social and human sciences applied to healthcare, either informed by interpretive or critical paradigms of research [5,6,7,8]. Focus groups can be carried out either in qualitative or mixed methods studies and are considered a powerful tool in health research [10,11,12,13,14,15]

Methods

Results

Conclusion