Table 4.

Theme one: How family involvement helps patients

Subtheme	Data extract number	Quotation
Families can help to keep the patient safe	1	‘boyfriend was able to distract [patient] and support her. He suggested they cook home-made pizzas. which patient said was a good help … Discussed that her boyfriend and family have been encouraging her to do things’ (H6S1 – case notes)
	2	‘I kept hold of the tablets – I had to hide them and all this lot, sometimes you'd forget and then I'd have to hide them again now, and you'd have to find another place’ (F4S1 – carer, partner)
	3	‘We do that quite a lot, advise them [carers] to keep the medication away from the patient and 9 times out of 10 they take control of that medication. And to be fair to the family that's a job that they're doing that we're not. So without the families that patient would be in hospital, so we rely 100% on families sometimes’ (H1S1 – staff)
	4	‘Sometimes she’s a bit, like, when I'm leaving in a morning she's at the top of the stairs as I'm going out of the front door, saying “Are you going to work today? Are you going to work today?” I’m like yeah, where else would I be going? And so she's like “Are you sure?” I'll show you my train tickets when I get back if you don't believe me’ (P1S1 – patient)
Families provide additional contextual information to support quality care	5	‘Just to have them support me and stuff ’cause like they know what’s going on… They kind of like help me to advocate for better care as well, because I kind of like let myself get fobbed off by a lot of different services and I involved them because then they help me get better care for myself’ (P1S2 – patient)
	6	‘Husband reports he has seen improvement with her and she’s more settled’ (P5S1 – case notes)
	7	‘Like you working together, that's why it's good to have good relationships and try and, ’cause when you go and speak to the person and mum’s there, they can help you out by saying well they're not normally like this or they've done this this morning. And say if someone's really depressed and they can't get out of bed to speak to you or something then they can help fill you in’ (H7S1 – staff)

F, family member; H, healthcare professional; P, patient; S1, research site one; S2, research site two.