Considerations for research on consumer empowerment and psychosocial interventions

Consumer empowerment is a political movement that, among many goals, seeks to diminish the stigma and discrimination experienced by people with severe and persistent psychiatric disorders. This paper reviews research strategies that address the methodological problems of studying consumer empowerment. Key issues include defining the subject of investigation, describing consumer-developed treatments using discovery-oriented research strategies, and sorting out the diverse roles of consumers in contemporary psychosocial programs. Consumer empowerment introduces a political paradigm into the understanding of severe mental illness, a paradigm that can be difficult to integrate with the goals of empirical research.