ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the involvement of mental health service users or survivors in social work education and research. Our chapter discusses service user involvement in social work education and research on a small regional campus of Edith Cowan University in Bunbury, Western Australia. In this chapter, we argue that far from being disadvantaged by geographical location, Edith Cowan University’s Social Work programme is powerfully connected to a global community of mental health activists and service users. We begin our chapter by discussing the regional university campus where we work and provide background information about our own connections to mental health and ways of understanding mental illness. We then go on to discuss user involvement in Australia and the first author’s growing interest in mental health activism, which has been pivotal to our work together. The chapter then discusses our own work in the area of user involvement and some of the challenges we have encountered. Finally, we conclude by arguing for the establishment of place for the experiential knowledges of mental health service users within user involvement in higher education.
