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The UOC will be researching how to increase user participation in mental health treatments in order to improve mental health care

Fostering good practices from Brazil and Canada in Catalonia

How to get patients involved in decision-making when implementing mental health treatments. This is the aim of Collaborative Medication Management: a mental health research and participative action project, running until 2019 by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), thanks to funding from the Recercaixa programme.

The project, coordinated by Asunción Pié, UOC researcher with the Care and Preparedness in the Network Society research group (CareNet) – attached to the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) – and professor from the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences; and Àngel Martínez, from the URV Medical Anthropology Research Center, takes the idea that psychological and pharmacological treatments, which form the basis of mental health therapy plans, contemplate the use of medication such as antipsychotics with side effects, which is why patients reject them, making it difficult to apply the treatments that they need to follow. Taking as examples the good practices carried out in Brazil and Canada known as “collaborative medication management”, the aim is to increase shared participation and responsibility with the patients during their treatment, thereby recovering their rights involved in decision-making.

Taking part in the research are the Radio Nikosia sociocultural association, the Aixec Cooperative; the adult mental health centres Badalona 2 and Nou Barris in Barcelona; the Catalan Federation of Mental Health; the Catalan Mental Health Congress Foundation (FCCSM) and Saräu: Association for Inclusive Leisure Activity.

Recercaixa Programme
This project is funded by the “la Caixa” Foundation's Recercaixa programme, which is supported by the Catalan Public University Association (ACUP). Together with this mental health project, this programme will be funding three UOC research projects as part of this year's approved call.