Listening to young voices: challenges of research with adolescent mental health service users.

Young people who have mental health problems and use the mental health services need to be consulted about their views regarding their experiences of care and treatment in the same way as adults do. Doing research with children and young people is relatively new but it is becoming more common and recent literature highlights a need to balance respect for their voices with responsibility for their best interests. This can be achieved by paying close attention to ethical and methodological issues throughout the course of every study. This paper reviews some of the issues involved in consultation research with adolescent mental health service users, and illustrates them with examples taken from an ongoing study into the experiences of young people in three Scottish child and adolescent mental health services.