Meeting for Change in the Belgian Mental Healthcare System: Reflections of Focus Groups on Mental Health Policy Evaluation

This paper draws on focus groups hold for the purpose of a mental health policy evaluation research. It argues that focus groups might be considered from a “meeting perspective”. Construed as meetings, focus groups stop standing for tools aimed at doing research and completing externally defined research or policy objectives. Instead, they constitute social systems built up by the participants, together with the meeting convener, or moderator. This paper suggests that having a close look at these social systems developing into the meeting room – or small writ societies, draws our attention to three overlapping phases combining in the system formation – a time for expression, a period of exploration and moments of meditation. These three phases stand for different but complementary contributions to the research process as well as the policy initiative in the framework of which the research occurs. These contributions, or social roles of meetings, include a diagnostic, a social knowledge production and a change broker’s roles. Taking advantage of the social roles of meeting requires specific attitudes and perhaps translation skills from the researcher, which are discussed at the end of the paper