Conclusions
psychosis, DHIs
This paper has presented an analysis of baseline participant characteristics in 2 pragmatic trials of a DHI that have openly recruited people who had used specialist mental health services and those who had not. Having used specialist mental health services and not having used specialist mental health services were explained by a broad range of sociodemographic and clinical characteristics in both trials. DHIs have the potential to extend mental health service provision to people not currently using statutory mental health services, and we have argued that differences in mental health service use history have the potential to influence how mental health interventions create change in participants. Hence, for interventions targeted at populations with mixed service use histories, investigators should consider how service use should be accounted for in work to develop and evaluate new interventions.This study is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR; Personal experience as a recovery resource in psychosis: Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) Programme; RP-PG-0615-20016). MS acknowledges the support of the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.Conflicts of Interest: None declared.Involvement plan.Description of online forms used to collect baseline data.Tables comparing characteristics of current and prior specialist service users in the Narrative Experiences Online Trial.