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Some of the most joyous, creative and exciting times of my life have been spent doing things with other service users. I've never doubted that I did the right thing getting involved in service user-controlled organisations and being open about who I am as a long-term user of mental health services. But pain, disillusion, conflict and stomach-churning emotions also go with "getting involved". The other day I learned something new when I did an audit of my week.

First, there was the pleasure of a meeting to develop a research initiative with a group of mental health service users and survivors and two supportive professionals. We've now been at this task for about a year and during that time we have all, I think, grown and gained in mutual understanding. It is a really good group to work in. Everybody brings their own particular personal skills, history and experience. We've begun to get to know each other and that's been a really positive process.


Second, though, were two other meetings that highlighted the problem I have now come to recognise. Both involved initiatives in which the relationship between service users and professionals was more complex and ambiguous. In both cases most of the service users were less experienced in dealing with the difficulties that this can create. So on the one side were professionals who may have thought they were keen on user involvement, but were also determinedly holding on to control. Typical signs of this were the chats they had between meetings without service users to keep things on the course they wanted and their requests after this had happened, that service users "shouldn't delay things" by trying to express in their own terms their feelings that they were not being listened to. On the other side were service users who wanted to be friendly, polite and supportive to professionals and who were not always fully aware of what was happening - not, at least, until later.

The people not to be in these situations (yes, it's the voice of bitter experience) are more experienced service users familiar with these sort of problems: the ones who know that you have to be assertive, business-like and often firm. So for less experienced service users the rest of us can seem nasty, impolite and aggressive. For reluctant professionals, we are a nuisance and "unrepresentative". Divide and rule and exclude the experienced service users are their usual tactics.


This is a real problem, because we must always be involving new service users. But there is a simple answer. Before people move into working with professionals and policy makers, they need to get together in their own independent organisations where they can gain new skills and confidence. Then, better equipped and empowered, we will be much better able to work together and deal with the dreary little tricks that anti-involvement workers use. One of those in question here has just gone freelance to provide consultancy on - you guessed it - user involvement!

Peter Beresford is a mental health system survivor.