Illness Experience Research Articles

Unraveling Chinese talk about emotion.

Research in cross-cultural psychiatry has asserted that Chinese people have a higher tendency to report somatic symptoms of their psychological distress than people with a European ethnic background. However, recent studies have reached inconsistent conclusions and most have confounded language use with culture in their study designs. Focusing on the varying degrees of orientation to Chinese culture, the present study examined the words freely listed by two Chinese groups of university students (mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese) when describing their illness experience. Words were categorized into somatic, emotion, and somatic-emotion clusters. Overall, the Chinese participants were more willing to talk about their emotions than their somatic symptoms in an anonymous survey. The enculturated mainland Chinese participants-who reported greater Chinese cultural identity-used significantly more emotion words but fewer somatic-emotion words than the Hong Kong Chinese participants. No group differences were found in somatic words. In contrast to previous findings, the current study failed to find support for the relationship between orientation to Chinese culture and somatic symptom reporting when controlling for language use.

Honest, Open, Proud (HOP) for people with mental illness in Hong Kong: a randomized controlled trial.

Self-stigma among people with mental illness is negatively associated with personal and clinical recovery. Due to the concealable nature of mental illness, people with mental illness experience constant struggles between concealment and disclosure. Disclosure of mental health challenges can potentially minimize negative impacts of self-stigma and enhance self-esteem and sense of empowerment. Honest, Open, Proud (HOP) is a peer-led intervention that promotes autonomous and dignified decisions about disclosure. This study examined the effectiveness of HOP on concealment motivation, empowerment, self-stigma, stigma stress, and recovery among people with lived experience of mental illness in Hong Kong. A total of 162 participants with a mean age of 45.38 were recruited and randomized into intervention group and waitlist control group. Participants in the intervention group were invited to attend a 6-session HOP group intervention. Significant improvement in optimism score from the empowerment scale was found in the intervention group compared to the waitlist control group and the effect was sustained at 1-month follow-up. However, significant changes were not found in other outcome variables. Only improvement in optimism was observed in the current study. Future study needs to examine the effects of HOP with further modification to maximize the benefit for people with lived experience of mental illness in the local context.

‘She thought the same way I that I thought:’ a qualitative study of patient-provider concordance among Gulf War Veterans with Gulf War Illness

Objective: Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), such as chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and Gulf War Illness (GWI), are difficult to treat. Concordance—shared understanding between patient and provider about illness causes, course, and treatment—is an essential component of high-quality care for people with MUS. This qualitative paper focuses on the experiences of United States military Veterans living with GWI who have endured unique healthcare challenges. Methods & Measures: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 31 Veterans with GWI to explore factors that contribute to and detract from concordance with their Veteran Affairs (VA) healthcare providers. In addition to being seen by VA primary care, over half of participants also sought care at a War Related Illness and Injury Study Center, which specializes in post-deployment health. Deductive and inductive codes were used to organize the data, and themes were identified through iterative review of coded data. Results: Major themes associated with patient-provider concordance included validation of illness experiences, perceived provider expertise in GWI/MUS, and trust in providers. Invalidation, low provider expertise, and distrust detracted from concordance. Conclusion: These findings suggest providers can foster concordance with MUS patients by legitimizing patients’ experiences, communicating knowledge about MUS, and establishing trust.

Exploratory study of an ally training program for mental health support

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an online mental health ally program on several measurements of readiness to help and stigma reduction. Allyship is one way to support people with mental health challenges beyond traditional care services.Design/methodology/approachThe efficacy of the program was evaluated in pre and postintervention surveys (n = 26) including measures of self-care, help-seeking intentions, peer-support self-efficacy, advocacy, knowledge of resources and stigma. A within-subject, repeated measures design was conducted analyzing changes at completion. Twenty-six participants who completed the program (either with or without lived experience of mental illness) were included in the study. A subgroup of participants (n = 11) who reported lived experiences of mental illness were assigned additional measures of internalized stigma, stigma stress, stigma resistance and self-esteem.FindingsAnalysis of mean differences indicated a statistically significant change in scores pre and postcompletion. The program increased peer-support, help-seeking intentions and self-esteem, while reducing internalized stigma and stigma stress. Findings provide preliminary support for program effectiveness in training individuals to support others and themselves through mental health challenges.Research limitations/implicationsTrained allies might improve the lives of individuals with mental health challenges by reducing discrimination and improving social support. We discuss the implication of allies to complement the mental health system.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first exploratory study on the efficacy of an online ally training program for individuals with mental illness. The NoStigmas Ally Program is a novel and original development in ally training.

People with mental illness stigmatize mental illness less: A comparison study between a hospital-based sample of people with mental illness and a non-clinical general population sample in urban India.

Evidence shows that stigma negatively influences the quality of life of persons with severe mental illness. Nonetheless, stigma towards mental illness is lower among persons with a lived experience of mental illness compared to the rest of the population. Understanding the association between stigma of mental illness and the mental status of individuals living in urban India and whether this association is moderated by demographic factors opens a new avenue for prevention of social exclusion. Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe unipolar depression (cases, n = 647) were recruited from among hospital patients in New Delhi between November 2011 and June 2012 and matched with non-psychiatric urban dwellers by age, sex, and location of residence (controls, n = 649). Propensity score matching with multivariable linear regression was used to test whether stigma towards mental illness, measured by a 13-item Stigma Questionnaire, differed between cases and controls. Cases reported significantly lower stigma scores than controls (b = -0.50, p < 0.0001). The strength of the association between mental illness and stigma was not affected after controlling for age, caste, sex, education, and employment status, while wealth marginally reduced the strength of the association. These findings suggest individuals with a lived experience of mental illness, in New Delhi, India, may be more tolerant towards mental illness and support the need to involve persons with lived experience in the development and implementation of health promotional campaigns and programs aimed at reducing stigma towards mental illness.

A Psychosocial Model of COVID-19 Vaccination: Antecedent and Concurrent Effects of Demographics, Traits, Political Beliefs, Vaccine Intention, Information Sources, Mandates, and Flu Vaccine History.

To date, research investigating psychosocial correlates of COVID-19 vaccination has been cross-sectional, parochial, and/or reliant upon non-stratified international samples, resulting in difficulty in clarifying the contributions of various vaccination-related influences. The present study tested a novel integration of prospective and concurrent associations of demographic and dispositional tendencies, intervening illness and preventive beliefs, vaccine intention, illness experiences, and concurrent contextual vaccine-related influences with subsequent COVID-19 vaccination. The preregistered study used a stratified online U.S. sample (N = 500), with assessments aligned to (a) "15 days to slow the spread" in March 2020, (b) vaccine authorization and major case/mortality surge during December 2020 and January 2021, and (c) the period following full vaccine approval in August 2021 during the third major/case mortality surge during September and October 2021. Path modeling showed the absence of children in the household and greater education were prospective predictors of vaccination. Trait openness and less conservative political beliefs showed indirect prospective associations with vaccination via stronger intermediating vaccine intention. Contextual vaccine-related influences of vaccine-related information sources, employer mandates, and flu vaccine history also showed direct associations with vaccination. In contrast to expectations, lower conscientiousness showed a direct prospective association with vaccination. Controlling for interrelations among study variables, the results of the integrative psychosocial model clarified the unique contributions and pathways from antecedent characteristics to vaccination while accounting for vaccine-related contextual influences, providing further direction for refining the timing and content of public health messaging for vaccination.

Early-Life Enteric Pathogen Exposure, Socioeconomic Status, and School-Age Cognitive Outcomes.

Early-life experiences of enteric infections and diarrheal illness are common in low-resource settings and are hypothesized to affect child development. However, longer-term associations of enteric infections with school-age cognitive outcomes are difficult to estimate due to lack of long-term studies. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between enteropathogen exposure in the first 2 years of life with school-age cognitive skills in a cohort of children followed from birth until 6 to 8 years in low-resource settings in Brazil, Tanzania, and South Africa. The study included participants from three sites from the Etiology, Risk Factors, and Interactions of Enteric Infections and Malnutrition and the Consequences for Child Health Study who were enrolled just after birth and followed for enteric infections, diarrheal illness, and cognitive development until 2 years of age. When the children were school-age, further data were collected on reasoning skills and semantic/phonemic fluency. We estimated associations between the burden of specific enteric pathogens and etiology-specific diarrhea from 0 to 2 years with cognitive test scores at 6 to 8 years using linear regression and adjusting for confounding variables. In this study, children who carried more enteric pathogens in the first 2 years of life showed overall decreases in school-age cognitive abilities, particularly children who carried protozoa, although this was not statistically significant in this sample. Socioeconomic factors such as maternal education and income were more closely associated with school-age cognitive abilities. Early-life enteric pathogens may have a small, lasting influence on school-age cognitive outcomes, although other socioeconomic factors likely contribute more significantly.

Mindfulness-Based Intervention Effect on the Psychophysiological Marker of Self-Regulation in Women With Endometriosis-Related Chronic Pain

Endometriosis is a gynecological disease that involves a broad biopsychosocial compromise with the potential to create a negative vicious cycle. Despite the complexity of factors influencing women's improvement, most interventions investigated target just the peripheral nociceptive sources of endometriosis-related pain. An alternative is intervening in self-regulation, which can potentially influence multiple domains of the illness experience. The present study examines the effect of a brief Mindfulness-Based Intervention (bMBI) on attention and autonomic nervous system regulation in women with endometriosis-related pain. Also, explore the interaction between these self-regulation domains and the affective pain dimension. An exploratory analysis of the secondary outcomes of a pilot randomized controlled trial was performed. The vagally-mediated Heart Rate Variability (vmHRV) at rest, cognitive stress, and recovery was employed to measure autonomic regulation. The Flanker and Stroop tasks were used to estimate the attention domains. Results showed that bMBI (n = 26) significantly improved Flanker accuracy and Flanker and Stroop reaction time compared to the control group (n = 28). bMBI significantly increased vmHRV at rest and recovery after cognitive stress. Attention mediated the bMBI effect on affective pain improvement. Results suggest that bMBI improves self-regulation domains with the potential to develop a broad biopsychosocial benefit in the endometriosis context. PerspectiveThis article demonstrates the positive impact of a brief Mindfulness-Based Intervention on attention and parasympathetic regulation in women suffering from endometriosis-related pain. This mindfulness-induced self-regulation improvement can benefit affective pain and potentially multiple psychophysiological processes relevant to endometriosis.

How the dyads of heart failure patients and their informal caregivers cope with the disease process: a qualitative synthesis

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Introduction Heart failure (HF) is a debilitating and progressive condition requiring consistent self-care by patients and their caregivers. Understanding the dyadic coping experience is crucial to inform the development of effective self-care interventions. Existing reviews focused on coping experience of patients or informal caregivers separately, without considering dynamic interaction between patients and caregivers. Purpose This review aimed to synthesize the qualitative studies to understand how patients and their caregivers interact and jointly cope with HF. Methods A systematic literature searching was conducted in nine electronic databases from inception to 11 June 2022. Manual searching of the reference list of relevant articles was also conducted. Articles were eligible if they focused on exploring the dyadic coping experience of HF patient-caregiver dyads aged 18 years or older. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool for qualitative studies was used to assess the methodological quality of included articles. Thematic synthesis was adopted to synthesize the findings. Results Thirty articles were included in the review. Eleven articles were rated as high quality and nineteen as moderate quality. Three analytical themes emerged from the findings: (1) challenges in their changing and shared life experience, (2) conditions shaping dyadic coping experience, and (3) evolving dyadic coping strategies from the illness experience (Figure 1). Patients’ progressive and debilitating disease conditions disrupted the shared lives of the dyads, consequently causing a series of stressors for both to cope with. Dyadic coping of HF is influenced by the interpersonal context (i.e., congruence of illness perception, dyadic relationship and interaction, dyadic coping capabilities) and social context (i.e., professional and informal input). During the coping process, HF dyads utilized constructive or destructive methods of adjusting relationship boundaries, transforming patterns of dyadic coping and regulating emotion in a dyadic context. Besides, the strategies of amplifying positive changes and seeking meaning were critical for dyads to normalize HF in their lives. Conclusion HF imposed multiple stressors on the shared life of the dyads. Under the influence of interpersonal and social context, patients and caregivers co-regulated dyadic coping strategies to respond to dyadic stress, either adaptively or maladaptively. A relationship-focused dyadic approach is needed to optimize the synergy in the dyadic coping process and support dyads to cope with HF.

Correlates of patient satisfaction with pain management at the Ho Teaching Hospital in Ghana: A cross-sectional study

Pain is a symptom that many people who visit the hospital with various illnesses experience. Inadequate pain management has been regularly shown to have a negative impact on patients' health and reduce patient satisfaction. Patients' satisfaction with pain management is therefore important. The aim of this study was therefore to assess patients’ satisfaction and experience with pain management at the Ho Teaching Hospital, Volta Region, Ghana. The study was a prospective cross-sectional investigation and was carried out among 196 adult patients (older than 18 years) at the emergency, medical, and surgical wards. Data was collected using the 2010 version of the patient outcome and satisfaction survey questionnaire developed by the American Pain Society. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis were employed in analysing the data obtained from the respondents. p-value less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.The results revealed that 96% of the respondents were satisfied with their pain management. Expectations for pain treatment (r = 0.221, p-value=0.002), percentage of pain relief in first 48 h (r = 0.439, p-value<0.001) and how helpful the information was (r = 0.158, p-value=0.027) were positively correlated with satisfaction with pain treatment. In addition, the median satisfaction with pain treatment was higher for those with knowledge on pain medication (p-value=0.043), and patients who were allowed to participate in decision-making indicated a higher level of satisfaction.The majority of patients (95% with acute pain and 100% with chronic pain) were satisfied with their pain management. Aside the effective use of analgesics, it was found that patient satisfaction can also be enhanced by good patient-provider relationships, providing patients with helpful information about their pain treatment, and allowing patients to participate in decisions about their pain management. This research is the first to provide such information for pain management in the Volta Region of Ghana.

Cancer Patient Perspectives on the Meaning of Healing and the Clinician as a Healer.

The experience of living with cancer is marked by suffering and loss, which creates a need for healing. Understanding what healing means to patients and how clinicians can play a role in the healing process is essential to holistic cancer care. The aim of this study was to explore the perspectives of cancer patients on the meaning and experiences of healing and the qualities of a clinician and the clinician-patient relationship that are healing. A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 14 cancer patients. Participants were asked about their illness experience, definition of healing, qualities of a healer, and relationships with clinicians that were healing. Interview transcripts were coded, and qualitative analysis was conducted to identify major themes. Participants defined the nature of healing as comprising aspects of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Participants described healing as alleviating pain and symptoms; promoting mental strength, emotional comfort, and spiritual connection; restoring and adapting to losses; and improving quality of life. The qualities of a clinician that contributed to a healing relationship included listening, empathy and compassion, understanding patients' values and goals, and caring for the patient as a whole person. Participants viewed healing as physical, psychosocial, and spiritual in nature and an important part of their cancer experience with an emphasis on quality of life. Clinicians played an important role beyond treating the cancer by helping in the healing process through their humanistic qualities and holistic approach to patient care.

Intellectualizing My Anorexia: My (Literal and Literary) Encounters With Madness

I was fourteen the first time I was hospitalized for my mental illness. I would be hospitalized several more times in the following two years, in programs ranging from pediatric psych wards to residential treatment facilities, and even one stay in the ICU following a suicide attempt. Ten years later, my academic career is built on my research around how to create more authentic and ethical representations of mental illness, using my own experience as the case study around which I build my methodology. In essence, I have made my trauma the subject of my academic studies, and yet—as my therapist often says—I cannot see how it could have been any other way. Mentally ill memoirists and essayists possess unique authorial insight into their experiences but are often viewed as unreliable narrators due to the very conditions on which that experience is predicated. Therefore a creative work integrating lived experience of mental illness and critical knowledge of research in medical humanities and literary theory offers a unique perspective in that the author holds a dual position of authority over the reader while also garnering suspicion from them. In this hybrid creative nonfiction piece, I reflexively examine this unique position as I inhabit the dual roles of both patient and expert.

Sharing uncertainty: Comparing patient narratives of help-seeking in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic across the UK, USA, Brazil, Germany and Spain

The early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic generated profound global uncertainty that disrupted health systems. This paper examines uncertainty about Covid-19 from the perspective of patients who sought clinical help in Spain, the UK, the USA, Brazil and Germany in 2020. We conduct a narrative analysis to explore how patients sought to involve health care teams in addressing the ontological and epistemological uncertainties of Covid illness. Patients wanted clinical support to make sense of Covid as a novel illness and interpret their journey to recovery. Access to this support varied. Help-seeking was enabled when health services perceived patient needs as legitimate, alongside an infrastructure that enabled them access to care despite health system strain. In Brazil and Spain, candidacy for support in the early stages of illness was unquestioned, whereas in Germany, the UK and USA patients had to convince health professionals to support them. Where patients did access clinical support, they valued clinicians sharing the work of developing knowledge that would address epistemological uncertainty about Covid. Patients valued clinicians’ potential to acquire relevant expertise, rather than what they knew about Covid in a given encounter. Comparing experiences across different national settings demonstrates that patients wanted health systems to engage in the uncertainty of the pandemic through being accessible and present during novel illness experiences, sharing responsibility for learning more, and having a curiosity about the unknown.

A Market of Lived Experience-User Involvement and the Commodification of Personal Experiences of Mental Illness.

Working actively to engage service users in participatory practices is both a policy expectation and a moral imperative for mental health social workers in contemporary Western mental health care. Recent research suggests that such practices of service user involvement are becoming increasingly individualised and driven by market logic. Based on an ethnographic study within a Swedish public psychiatric organisation, this article applies the concept of commodification to examine this trend. By showing how the practice of user involvement takes the form of a market where personal narratives and experiences of mental health problems are bought and sold as commodities, the analysis illuminates how market logic permeates the everyday practice of user involvement. One consequence of this commodification is that user organisations, as well as individual service users, are restricted in their role as independent actors pursuing their own agenda, and instead increasingly act on behalf of the public and as providers of personal experiences. While it is vital that service user perspectives are heard and recognised within mental health services, mental health social workers need to be aware of the risks of commodifying lived experience. When attention is directed to individual experiences and narratives, there is a risk that opportunities to advocate on behalf of the user collective as a whole and speak from a more principled and socio-political standpoint are lost. In addition, the commodification of personal experience tends to rationalise and privilege user narratives that conform to the dominant institutional logic of the mental health organisation, while excluding more uncomfortable and challenging voices, thereby undermining the ability of service users to raise critical issues that do not align with the interests of the mental health organisation.

Pathways to care among patients with mental illness at two psychiatric facilities in Johannesburg, South Africa.

A patient's pathway to care is often characterized by a sequence of actions taken to remedy ill-health. Research exploring the help-seeking behavior of individuals with mental health problems in sub-Saharan Africa is relatively limited. This study assessed the perceptions and experiences of mental illness and treatment among patients with mental illness at two psychiatric facilities in Johannesburg, South Africa. 309 interviewer administered surveys were conducted between January and July 2022. We used a logistic regression model to examine factors associated with receiving treatment for mental illnesses from traditional healers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 participants during the same period. Interviews were transcribed and translated into English. Data were managed using NVivo 11 software and thematically analyzed. Results showed that 144 (47%) patients sought mental health care from traditional healers. Higher anxiety symptoms, number of people in the household, believing that traditional medicine can cure mental illnesses, and township living were associated with seeking mental healthcare from traditional healers. Qualitative analysis indicated that participants often believed that mental illness was due to bewitchment and consulted with multiple traditional healers, thus spending large amounts of money for treatment and ultimately delaying access to biomedical care. Collaborative approaches between traditional healers and biomedical professionals show promise in terms of allowing for improved identification and treatment of individuals with mental disorders.

“Wish everyone safe and sound”: Ambient affiliation in online comments on medical consultation videos on Bilibili.com

The emergence of social media has expanded the traditional landscape of health communication research. This study applies the framework of “ambient affiliation” in Systemic Functional Linguistics to a digital health context. Specifically, it explores how viewers of medical consultation videos on Bilibili.com, a Chinese online video-sharing platform, discursively negotiate alignments and construct bonds of shared values and knowledge in their online comments. Discourse analysis of the comments shows that ambient affiliation among viewers is formed in relation to four main types of interaction (i.e., evaluating the participants of medical consultations, sharing illness experiences, seeking health-related advice, and negotiating medical knowledge), through recurrent deployment of communing and dialogic affiliation strategies that act upon particular ideational-interpersonal couplings in the online comments. We argue that ambient affiliation in this digital discourse reflects the interest- and content-focused interactions in the ‘affinity space’ offered by the social media platform. Our study expands the existing knowledge on ambient affiliation by situating it in a digital health context. It also provides insights into how medical practitioners and health educators can more effectively disseminate health knowledge and enhance public health literacy on social media.

A Molecule from Madness: An Exploration into Patients’ Illnesses through West Texas Polio

Neurology holds a unique perspective that embodies the art of capturing a patient’s story. Despite medical advancements, many neurological conditions leave patients permanently impaired. This sudden loss of independence can be demoralizing and, in most cases, directly changes a person’s identity. It is therefore a necessary part of a neurologist’s trade to know their patient’s history—their story. Their tales reveal intimate details of their personality changes, memory loss, sensory deprivation, and movement disorders. A true neurologist is a person that remains vulnerable through their willingness to take a history—the story of their patient—and remain curious, vulnerable, and compassionate through their journey to heal and comfort the patient. To understand the patient’s illness experience in neurology, the underlying themes of patient recovery (compassion, determination, and patience) are explored with regard to the neurological patient’s experience. These themes are then expanded to include the neurology patient’s mental perceptions of themselves, and their illness’ influences over their identity, recovery, and daily life. In addition to the patient’s experience, the neurologist’s awareness and emotional response to the patient’s illness experience can provide an opportunity to develop a strong therapeutic bond with their patient and improve patient outcomes. Given that their neurological impairment causes a loss of independence and control over their identity and self-worth, neurologists can incorporate the patient’s experience into their management and treatment, to better address their emotional and spiritual needs as they come to terms with their identity.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About the Psychological Aspects of Palliative Care Encounters.

Palliative care clinicians enhance the illness experiences of patients and their families through building therapeutic relationships. Many psychological concepts underlie a clinician's approach to a specific patient. Through high-yield tips, this article highlights ten selected psychological elements that palliative care clinicians often use to support patients. As we all (both clinicians and patients) bring our own histories and unique biographies to the work of palliative care, a more explicit focus on the psychological aspects of this work can enhance our own experience and efficacy as providers. With a thoughtful focus on the psychological aspects of how we engage with patients, palliative care clinicians can offer a more meaningful therapeutic encounter.

A scoping review of studies examining mental health literacy among Arabs worldwide.

There is growing interest in Mental health literacy (MHL) worldwide, given its important role in overcoming barriers to service use and reducing mental health disparities. However, little is known about MHL among Arabs. We conducted a scoping review to examine MHL levels and correlates among Arabs in both Arab and non-Arab countries, based on Jorm's MHL framework. We conducted a scoping review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, using six electronic databases: PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Soc Index, Web of Science, and Scopus. Data were summarized and synthesized. Nine studies examining MHL among Arabs met our inclusion criteria. Seven of them used a quantitative cross-sectional design. Four studies were conducted in Arab, and five were in non-Arab countries. Five studies were conducted among university students. The studies included indicate moderate to high levels of MHL. Higher MHL was associated with female gender, personal experience of mental health illness, and with help-seeking behaviours. Our review shows a significant lack of empirical studies on Arabs' MHL. These findings should be considered as a call for action for public health researchers, mental health workers, and policymakers to prioritize research in this field.

Experiences of goal planning in Australian community pharmacy settings for people experiencing mental illness: A qualitative study.

Person-centred goal planning is increasingly being incorporated into healthcare interventions. People experiencing severe and persistent mental illnesses (SPMIs) have high levels of co-occurring health conditions, reducing their life expectancy when compared with the general population. As medications are commonly used in the treatment of SPMIs, community pharmacists are well-placed to support the health and wellbeing of this population. To examine pharmacists' and service users' experiences of goal planning as a component of a community pharmacy-based health intervention for people experiencing SPMIs (PharMIbridge intervention). This study utilised a qualitative exploratory approach with an interpretive description method. Semistructured interviews were undertaken with community pharmacists (n = 16) and service user participants (n = 26) who had participated in pharmacist support services for people experiencing SPMIs (PharMIbridge intervention). Four themes relating to goal planning were identified. First, goal planning provided purpose and motivation for participation in the intervention. Planning realistic goals was important but often challenging. Both pharmacists and service users highlighted the relational aspects of goal planning and how strong relationships supported positive behaviour change and outcomes. Finally, individualised and flexible approaches were important aspects of the intervention, ensuring goals were meaningful to service users. The findings from this study identified positive outcomes from the inclusion of goal-planning processes in a community pharmacy-based health intervention. Further research regarding tools, strategies or training that could support future goal-planning interventions in primary healthcare is needed. The PharMIbridge randomised controlled trial research team included lived experience members and was overseen by an expert panel that included members with a lived experience of mental illness and representatives from key organisations. The training provided to pharmacists was co-designed and co-delivered by the researchers and lived experience representatives, and pharmacists were supported by lived experience mentors. Service user participants were invited to participate in the interviews through a number of pathways (e.g., at the completion of the intervention, flyers). Those interested were provided with the full study participant information and provided with a $30 gift voucher at the conclusion of the interview.