Gillian speaks about the value of patients who can have strong opinions, while respecting other’s perspective

Transcript

Interviewer: Similar to what I asked earlier, what kind of skills do you think youth and families need to have to be a part of these kinds of partnerships?

One thing I try to find is a bit of a balance in the mix of capacities of youth. I don’t want to have professional consumers if we can call it that, people who are advocates all the time as the only ones in my sample. I want to have youth who are acutely struggling with psychosis right now as long as they’re well enough to participate from the clinician’s perspective. I want people who are not so long past their experience that it’s, you know, kind of been reshaped. But I do want to blend because I do want – you know, some of those people who are acutely struggling aren’t going to be able to stay in throughout because they may have another episode, something may be coming up in their life. 

So, it’s tricky but I – as I say they need to be well enough and strong enough and that’s where the clinicians, getting the right clinicians onboard, so that you can – they become part of the team too in essence, not really, but in essence in terms of selecting people that they feel are well enough to participate but also its fresh enough that they can be really helpful participants. Same with family members, if you get the most powerful advocate who may be fixed in their positions and not able to be open then that’s going to be problematic as well. And we’ve had sometimes where, you know, a real advocacy piece comes through and, you know, we sort of tolerate that but it doesn’t really help in terms with coming up with solutions that everybody can use. So it’s tricky, you know, you want people who are strong in their opinions but also open in their opinions.

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