Collaborating with people with lived experience
19 2023
“It was transformative to go from feeling invisible to doing research that would help others”
Becoming a lived experience advisor on gameChange was a turning point for Eva Roberts, rebuilding confidence and opening up a new career path.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More13 2022
2022: Peer research, partnership working and young people
As 2022 draws to a close, McPin Research Director Vanessa shares some of her highlights from the last year, and some things she’s excited about for the next
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More26 2021
4 things I learnt running a social group for people with psychosis
Lived experience facilitator Gill shares why social groups offer more value than they’ve been given credit for, as well as some tips for others looking to set one up
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More19 2021
How lived experience can help revamp mental health tools
Even well-established tools can benefit from service user input found Public Involvement Lead Carolyn Asher following a recent study
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More4 2021
Visualising Public Mental Health
Public mental health affects us all – this new tool pulls together all the connected components in one visual framework
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More14 2021
‘It gives me an excuse to out myself’ – Jozef’s marathon story
With three weeks to go to the London Marathon one of our fab runners Jozef shares his mental health journey, why this has been a freeing experience, and the importance of self-soothing
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Inclusion and combating stigma
Read More10 2021
Suicide “postvention”: what do we know about social support?
To mark World Suicide Prevention Day, researcher Hannah Scott shares the benefits and challenges of social support after a loss to suicide.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More27 2021
Mental health data science: “My NHS patient record is a very precious thing”
A lived experience researcher working with McPin on a ‘big data’ project discusses the hidden impact of data in their life
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More23 2021
Why data science is unlocking new doors in mental health research
Data could be the key to new discoveries in mental health research – but it should be handled in the right way
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More17 2021
Why we need to remove this barrier to publishing in research journals
To involve people with lived experience of mental distress in the publishing of research, simple but vital changes must be made says Dan Robotham
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Inclusion and combating stigma
Read More2 2021
Covid-19, young people and inequalities: The emerging picture
How did the Covid-19 pandemic impact different groups of young people? A member of our Young People’s Network has unearthed the data
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More11 2021
Forgotten or ignored? Safety research in community mental health services
Have your say on the safety and quality of care provided in adult community-based mental health services
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Improving mental health support
Read More6 2021
Imposter syndrome and work – it’s not a ‘you’ problem
A McPin senior researcher discusses how imposter syndrome is related to discrimination in employment systems, and how peer support and lived experience could counteract it
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More4 2021
Why peer support could play a role in tackling unemployment: the Peer Support Employment Groups Evaluation
There are no easy solutions to long-term unemployment but peer support could help, says Dan Robotham
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More28 2021
How Time To Change got me started as a lived experience researcher
McPin researcher Lisa reflects on the incredible impact Time to Change has had – both on her personally and on the wider mental health landscape - and what needs to happen next
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Inclusion and combating stigma
Read More26 2021
Black Thrive: The benefits and challenges of having a dual role in research
Despite its challenges, being on both the project and evaluation team can bring important and unique perspectives to the project work, says Faith Amasowomwan
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More19 2021
Black Thrive: Becoming a Community Peer Researcher
Although stepping out of my comfort zone was challenging, it was hugely rewarding says Davino Beckford
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More22 2021
“It’s fun and enabled me to identify and express my needs”: how gameChange compares to other therapies I’ve tried
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More15 2021
“We need to see lived experience as a strength rather than a risk”
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More7 2020
Successfully co-producing research!
The Community Navigator study is one of the best examples of co-production in research that McPin has been involved in. Here the team reflect on what worked so well.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More2 2020
We often discuss why lived experience improves research quality, but what about the ‘how’?
Rachel Temple reflects on how she has used her lived experience of mental health issues to inform her work with young people in mental health research over the last three years
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More30 2020
The importance of involving people in digital mental health research
Digital mental health products need to have user involvement at the core, says Anja Hollowell
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More23 2020
How to make partnership working across sectors effective
Partnership working offers great benefits but also presents challenges. Here are our reflections on how to make it a success from a partnership between the mental health and women’s sectors
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More29 2020
“I belong here as much as anyone else, having lived my field of expertise 24/7 for 17 years”
Being a Lived Experience Practitioner allows me to use my past experiences to bring about change but there is still much to be done to appropriately value these roles going forward, says guest blogger Ellie Wildbore
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More24 2020
Using a peer research approach to evaluate women-led peer support
Peer research not only enriched the findings from the Women Side by Side evaluation, but it also brought mutual benefits to everyone involved, says Tanya MacKay
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More16 2020
Women Side by Side has helped raise awareness of mental health in a BAME community
Evaluating and facilitating a women-led peer support programme as a peer meant that Fozia Haider was able to experience the benefit of the approach first-hand
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More9 2020
Overcoming imposter syndrome as a peer researcher
Our blogger reveals how her experiences of observing women-led peer support groups during the Women Side by Side evaluation helped dispel fears of feeling like a fraud
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More2 2020
Women Side by Side shows what can happen if women are given the space to grow
Naima Iqbal shares her experiences of evaluating a women-led peer support programme, including how spending time with the women helped her own confidence to grow
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More8 2020
Involving peers can enrich research when it’s done right
What factors are important for peer researchers to have in common with research participants? We asked Sarah Markham, an advisory group member, about her involvement in the evaluation of Women Side by Side
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More2 2017
Finding the right people to ask the right questions: new survey on young people’s mental health
by Thomas Kabir
What do we really know about young people’s mental health? We know it’s a big issue. Around 1 in 10 young people have experienced a mental health difficulty. Around 75% of people with a mental health problem start developing it before the age of 181.
Children, young people and families
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More25 2017
Using Lived Experience in Evaluating Mental Health Peer Support
by Andreja Mesaric | Julie Billsborough | Raj Hazzard | Richard Currie | Sarah Gibson
This essay was originally published as the afterword to the early research findings of the evaluation of the Side by Side programme. In it the researchers who used their lived experience of mental health problems and peer support whilst working on the evaluation reflect on how including that expertise from experience strengthened the research.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More12 2017
Our Evaluation News
Over the last few weeks we’ve been giving our website a bit of a spring clean. As part of that we’ve added a new page showcasing the work we do for partner organisations including our work on evaluations. This is a growing part of what we do, helping other organisations to understand what impact their work is having and how it can be improved.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More16 2016
Research in 2016
by Agnes Hann | Johanna Frerichs
To mark the end of 2016, we’re taking a look back at some of what the McPin team has learned over the past year.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More16 2016
McPin Methods
by Ian Bradshaw
The 30th of November saw the first of what we will hope will be a series of methods workshops. It brought together over 70 researchers to discuss how to integrate ‘lived experience expertise in mental health research teams’. The event was massively oversubscribed and if the fact that we had to cut short discussions before we were physically kicked out of the venue is any guide, it succeeded in its aim of stimulating debate and the sharing of ideas.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More30 2016
Influencing the debate – peer research in academic journals
by Sarah Hamilton
A new special edition reporting findings from the Viewpoint survey was published in July. It includes a paper on our qualitative research into mental health discrimination experiences which was co-authored with four peer researchers. We reflect on the importance of experts by experience being named as authors, and why they are so often absent from peer reviewed journal articles.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Inclusion and combating stigma
Read More25 2016
Getting our Report Card – asking people what they think of you and acting on their responses, the Your Experience in Mind Survey
by Madeleine Musgrove
Research and Evaluation Officer, Mind
Mind have been working together with the McPin Foundation since 2014 to evaluate the experience of people using our federated local Minds through the annual ‘Your Experience in Mind’ survey. We have 146 local Minds across England and Wales providing over 50 different types of service.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Improving mental health support
Read More30 2016
Why did I take on the work with the McPin Foundation?
In March this year I took on an exciting opportunity: working with The McPin Foundation as a Peer Project Assistant on a pilot scheme entitled ‘My Story, Our Future’. We will be exploring the stories of people who have themselves used or supported others accessing Early Intervention for Psychosis (EIP) services.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More9 2016
Peer Research and Complex Needs: A Mental Health Perspective
by Agnes Hann
Read a new blog about how research on people with complex needs are using an approach that we champion at the McPin Foundation – peer research. Written by Agnes, a senior researcher in our team, it looks at some of the challenges and benefits of peer involvement in research. It was written for Revolving Doors, a charity that supports people with complex needs including mental health issues. We are really proud to support their work exploring the role of peer - otherwise known as experts by experience - contribution to research.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More3 2015
Reflections from working on an evaluation project: Your Experience in Mind
by Julie Billsborough
We are keen to look at new ways of involving mental health service users and carers in research. Part of our commitment to developing new approaches has been to investigate the things that have worked well and not so well about the methods we have tried in our own research and evaluation studies. We will publish a series of methods papers describing our work. Our first methods paper describes the 'Survey Champion' approach used in an evaluation of Local Minds.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Improving mental health support
Read More1 2015
Reflections from 10 years of service user and survivor research event
by McPin Foundation
On Monday (1st June, 2015), St George's University of London celebrated 10 years of doing service user and survivor research with a fantastic day of discussions attended by many inspirational leaders in mental health research, from a lived experience perspective. Three of us from the McPin Foundation attended. In one of the sessions, Sarah Carr, Peter Beresford, Diana Rose and Jayasaree Kalathil reflected on the place of collaborative and survivor research in Universities. Is it safe in universities?
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More2 2013
Does service user involvement in research make a difference?
A major interest of the McPin Foundation is how service user and carer involvement in mental health research, reaching beyond taking part as participants, improves any project. It is a topic that is of interest to research funders as well, with programmes of research being commissioned by the NIHR to answer this question.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read More22 2013
Doing PPI better: why we are always learning
by Sarah Hamilton
Last week, I attended a fantastic conference on Patient and Public Involvement in Exeter, organised by the South Peninsula CLAHRC.
The conference was a very inspiring event with a wide variety of researchers, practitioners and people who have used health services and are engaged in Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in research.
Collaborating with people with lived experience
Read MoreTopics
- TRIUMPH
- #MentalHealthResearchMatters
- Therapies
- ADHD
- Mental Health Research Matters
- Imposter syndrome
- Eating disorders
- Awards
- Cost-of-living crisis
- Peer research
- Paranoia
- Mental Health Services
- University Mental Health Day
- Neurodiversity
- Mental Health & Justice
- Podcast
- Youth Mental Health Day
- London Marathon 2021
- Inequality
- Air pollution
- Data Science
- Mental Health & Loneliness
- Mental Health Awareness Week
- Mental Health & Nature
- Mental Health & Sport
- Doctorate opportunity
- PhD
- Employment
- Young People's Network
- LGBT+
- Anti-racism
- Storytelling
- Psychosis
- Words That Carry On
- Screen Time
- Covid-19
- Working from home
- Austerity
- Personality disorder
- Autism
- Women
- Money
- Violence and abuse
- Trauma-informed
- Trauma
- Public mental health
- Maternal mental health
- Digital mental health
- Carers
- Coproduction
- Power
- Mental Health
- Time to Talk Day
- Peer Support
- Children, young people and families
- Improving mental health support
- Fundraising
- Inclusion and combating stigma
- Mental Health Policy & Strategy
- Mental Health Science
- Public Involvement
- Research methods
- Wellbeing and connectedness
Bloggers
- Agnes Hann
- Alison Faulkner
- Amy Meadows
- Amy Peabody
- Andreja Mesaric
- Anjie Chhapia
- Ben Gray
- Dan Robotham
- Daryl Sweet
- Dolly Sen
- Evan Champion
- Harminder Kaur
- Helen Casebourne
- Humma Andleeb
- Ian Bradshaw
- Jackie Hardy
- Jennie Parker
- Jessica Bond
- Johanna Frerichs
- John Gibson
- Julie Billsborough
- Karen James
- Kat Berry
- Katrina Heyman
- Kirsten Morgan
- Laura Hemming
- Lucy Power
- Madeleine Musgrove
- McPin Foundation
- Megan Rees
- Naomi Clewett
- Nhung
- Rachel Temple
- Raj Hazzard
- Richard Currie
- Roger Smith
- Rose Thompson
- Ruth Sayers
- Ryan Freeman
- Sarah Gibson
- Sarah Hamilton
- Susanne Gibson
- Thomas Kabir
- Tilda Simpson
- Tillie Cryer
- Vanessa Pinfold
- Vanessa Yim