Research Article A Systematic Mapping Review of Family Perspectives About Received Mental Health Interventions Caroline Walters 1 and Melissa Petrakis 1 Abstract Purpose: Families experience their own journey in adjusting to the role of carer. The purpose of this review was to understand from the perspective of families and carers which practices, and health system responses meet their needs in supporting people who experience mental health challenges. Methods: A systematic evidence mapping review was conducted, through searching five electronic databases to identify peer-reviewed studies, written in English and published between the years 2010 and 2020, that prioritized the perspectives of families. Results: Fifty-five studies met the inclusion criteria and were mapped according to the country of author, year, methodology, who delivered, and intervention mode and format. Discussion: The review demonstrated a diversity of interventions with growing numbers of studies considering the view and experiences of carers. There is evidence of increasingly active participation of carers in designing, leading, or facilitating interventions, recognizing the importance of coproduction in tailoring family and carer support. Keywords caregiver, family carers, mapping review, family intervention, mental health, field of practice, systematic review, literature review Background Family and friends of people who experience mental health challenges are increasingly recognized as having significant roles in providing physical, financial, and emotional support and yet often experience their own feelings of distress, anxiety, and disconnection (Day & Petrakis, 2016). Alongside these feelings, there is a long history of carers expressing feeling unheard (Stanbridge & Burbach, 2007) and being “excluded from the treatment of their loved ones” (State of Victoria, 2019, p. 53). Carer burden is well-documented within the literature and, in the field of mental health, is seen as arising from the need for information, skills, and respite, as well as emotional and financial support (Askey et al., 2009). Within this review, the term carer incorporates family members, friends, or any person who, in an unpaid capacity, supports a person who experiences mental health challenges. Carers clearly align their own burden reduction and what they need from mental health services, with the provision of appropriate, safe, inclusive, and easily accessible care for the service user (Askey et al., 2009; Hughes et al., 2011; Lucksted et al., 2018). Carers also express the value they can add through their expertise of caring and therefore express a wish to be listened to and respectfully involved within the care of the service user (Askey et al., 2009; Doody et al., 2017). Addition- ally, service users have highlighted how important it is that, during times when they are not well enough to advocate for themselves, the system is open to and better able to listen to the advocacy efforts, on their behalf, of family or nominated per- sons to uphold their wishes. The Perspective of Family Carers in the Literature: An Emergent and Too Often Silent Voice There is international recognition that carers, service users, and practitioners acknowledge the importance of carer inclusion in planning and care provision within mental health (Giacco et al., 2017). There are resultant benefits of reduced inpatient admis- sions, better communication among all parties, improvement in user symptoms and quality of life, and reduction in relapse rates (Petrakis et al., 2014), when this occurs. Despite this, substantial evidence indicates ongoing tension between carer and service user involvement and professional accountability and risk (Bee et al., 2015; Martin et al., 2017). This tension remains one of the several barriers to the increasingly interna- tionally mandated inclusion of families and carers in the 1 Department of Social Work, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Corresponding Author: Caroline Walters, Department of Social Work, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, Melbourne, Victoria 3145, Australia. Email: caroline.walters@monash.edu Research on Social Work Practice ª The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/10497315211010950 journals.sagepub.com/home/rsw 2022, Vol. 32(1) 61–72