Our next SRN Discussion and Support Group meeting is at 17.30 BST on Thursday 15 October.
The meetings provide a space for people with lived experience of mental distress to discuss research related topics and the issues and barriers we face in getting involved in doing mental health research.
At this meeting, we have Dina Poursanidou PhD (Independent User/Survivor Researcher0 speaking about her work with Equally Well, an international collaboration of organisations seeking to address the unmet physical health needs of people with lived experience of mental health and addiction challenges:
“Lived Experience Leadership in the ‘Equally Well’ movement: pitfalls and possibilities”
Dina writes:
‘Equally Well’ is an international collaboration of organisations seeking to address the unmet physical health needs of people with lived experience of mental health and addiction challenges. In various mission statements, ‘Lived Experience Leadership’ is depicted as being at the core of the Equally Well movement.
Drawing on my involvement in the ‘Equally Well Canada’ project as a research consultant, this presentation will problematise Lived Experience Leadership in the context of the Equally Well movement, and interrogate the pitfalls pertaining to the meaningful embedding of Lived Experience Leadership within Equally Well. These pitfalls comprise, among others:
- tokenistic involvement of people with lived experience of mental health challenges;
- power/knowledge hierarchies and issues of epistemic injustice;
- marginalisation of the voices/concerns/priorities of mental health service users when it comes to their physical health needs within academic research, policy debates and clinical practice;
- and issues of co-optation and extractivism.
The presentation and discussion that will follow, will consider how we may respond to the aforementioned pitfalls so Lived Experience Leadership does not remain merely something to aspire to within the Equally Well movement and other contexts.”
We will also have a peer support section of the meeting where you can bring research related issues of concern for support and discussion.
Our meetings are via Zoom. You can register for this October meeting here.
Although our primary focus is often on mental health research in England, we also welcome researchers with lived experience of mental distress who are involved in other areas of research and survivor researchers from outside England or the UK.
We need your feedback on these meetings. If you’ve been to any of our Discussion and Support meetings in the last year or so, please let us know what you think of the meetings and share your views on what you want from them. We are also asking about the timing of the meetings. Please spare a few minutes to complete our anonymous feedback form here.
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