Rural Community Engagement for Mental Health

Community-engagement strategies have been used successfully in mental health research and have been proposed as ideal for addressing stigma associated with mental illness. However, little has been published about using a community-engaged approach to address mental health and associated stigma in rural communities. We aimed to develop a mental health patient-centered research community and advisory board for two rural communities in Michigan with the long-term goal of improving mental health care, self-management, and outcomes in these communities. The project used principles from community-based participatory research (CBPR) and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) models. Focus groups and the development of a mental health research advisory committee (MHRAC) were used to engage the community. Five focus groups were conducted with a total of 38 participants, including several individuals who self-identified as having mental health issues, to identify unmet mental health needs as well as available resources. MHRAC consisted of 24 volunteers and prepared written summaries from the focus group transcripts to identify key mental health themes expressed by participants in the focus groups. When comparing the original transcript to the focus group summaries compiled by MHRAC, we determined differences between the reports, but found stigma to be a common theme. This project served as a catalyst to prioritize and address selected mental health issues in these rural communities.