Trialog—an exercise in communication between consumers, carers and professional mental health workers beyond role stereotypes

Community mental health work strives for person-centeredness, resourceand recovery-orientation [1]. Personcentered recovery-oriented care in the community needs well functioning communication and collaboration between mental health workers of different backgrounds with users of services and their families and friends. During the last years in mental health—as in other medical fields—patients have been assuming a more active consumer-role in a partnership model of care instead of being the passive subject of treatment in a paternalistic relationship. New forms of collaborations require new skills of clinicians, service users and their families and friends.