An interdisciplinary workshop to discuss new research into mental healthcare, particularly more productive interdisciplinary dialogue, drawing on the recent publication ‘Collaborative Ethnographic working in Mental Health’. People involved in mental health often fail to recognize how they are described by researchers from the humanities and social sciences, which inhibits productive collaboration. This workshop will discuss Collaborative Ethnographic Working in Mental Health, a recent publication that seeks to chart a new direction for research into mental healthcare, with the aim of creating the conditions for more productive interdisciplinary dialogue. It explores how clinical thinking and behaviour, illness experience, and clinical relationships are all shaped by the bureaucratic context. In particular, it examines tensions between what we want from mental healthcare and how accountable bureaucracies actually work, and proposes that mental healthcare research should not just evaluate new interventions but should investigate new ways of organising.