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Survivor Researcher Network News
Participants needed for user-led research project
Have you experienced abuse, harassment or violence (hate crime) because of your mental distress / health difficulties?
Have you sought help as a result of your experiences?
Middlesex University are looking for people aged 18 years and over for a user-led study exploring people's experiences of being victimised because of their mental distress / mental health difficulties. They want your help to make recommendations for adult safeguarding and how systems such as the police can respond better to people with mental health difficulties.
If you are interested in being interviewed, the researchers would like to know more about you in order to ensure that they are reaching a range of different people with the research. If you are interested in being interviewed please download, complete and return the recruitment monitoring form. You can find this on the project webpage.
The information you give on this form will remain strictly confidential but it will help to monitor and plan the research interviews so they include people from a wide range of backgrounds.
The recruitment deadline is 13th June 2016. If you have any questions about the research please email: keepingcontrol@mdx.ac.uk or phone Alison Faulkner on 07729301379.
Middlesex University Centre for Co-production in Mental Health Inaugural International Seminar
‘Insider, Outsider, Impostor?’ Perspectives of mental health service user and survivor researchers and teachers on co-production in academia
Monday 18th July. Location: C114, College Building, Middlesex University, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BT
The seminar offers a unique opportunity to learn about mental health coproduction in academia from the perspective of leading service user and survivor experts who will discuss coproduction and service user and survivor leadership in research, teaching and course development, and mental health service consultancy.
The keynote speaker is Dr. Sarah Gordon, Research Fellow, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago Wellington, New Zealand. Sarah is an international leader in the field and convenes the annual international Service User Academia Symposium.
Using a blend of talks and facilitated workshops, the aim is to bring together mental health service user and survivor teachers and researchers with their non-user colleagues and students to discuss how co-productive approaches can advance and improve research and practice.
The seminar is limited to 60 places. 40 places are available for other paying delegates at £59 each. 20 free places are available to service users and survivors who are unwaged, on a low income or from small user-led mental health organisations.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided. All delegates will receive a follow-up report of the proceedings of the seminar.
To find out more and to book your place, please see their website.
Co-production Conference in Leeds
Thursday 9th June, 10am - 4pm, St Chad's Headingley, Leeds, LS16 5JT
Touchstone invites you to a Co-production Conference. The aim of the event is to develop co-production across Leeds and beyond, by promoting the role of service user experts alongside commissioner
and provider experts to influence service design, delivery and outcomes.
The conference on Thursday 9th June will bring key partners and stakeholders together to look at good practice and the development of standards around co-production.
Touchstone are working with Leeds Involving People to co-produce what promises to be an inclusive, exciting and thought provoking day.
Please book your place by Tuesday 31st May. In order to accommodate everyone, there will be a limit to 3 people per organisation. Register here.
Reimagining Professionalism in mental health: towards co-production - ESRC seminar series
Seminar 3: Contemporary developments in mental health practice: a help and/or a hindrance to powersharing.
Tuesday 19th July, Leeds University
This seminar will consider co-production in the light of new practices in mental health. These include the advent of specialised low- and high-intensity psychological services for people with common mental health problems, funded by the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme; the introduction of new professional roles (such as Psychological Well-being Practitioners, Cognitive Behavioural Therapists Associate Practitioners), and the changing roles of mental health nurses.
New initiatives designed to promote coproduction, for example through service user-led recovery work and personalisation will be discussed from a variety of stakeholder perspectives in relation to the evidence drawn from the Connecting People Intervention.
To apply for a place to attend the event, click here.
Mental Health and Cultural Diversity Conference
Exploring Transformative Practices and Service Models
22 - 24th June, De Montfort University, Leicester
The aim of this conference is to discuss and debate transformatory practices, appropriate and acceptable services models from diverse cultural communities around the world. This conference is for medical, health and social care professionals and service providers, including psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and social workers and educationalists. This conference is also for service commissioners, service users and carers, academics, policy makers, and third sector organisations.
For further details and registration please see the website.
Closing date for registration is 10th June.
The effects of the Prevent Agenda in the Health and Education sectors
Amrit Singh, a human rights lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative is researching (from a human rights perspective) the effects of Prevent in the health and education sectors with a view to producing a report/briefing papers on the subject that could be used to advocate for reform.
Specifically, she would like to examine how the statutory duty under Prevent is being applied in the health and education sectors, what kinds of training medical and education professionals are receiving, and how Prevent is being applied in practice, who is being referred and on what basis, and with what effect on the community.
She would like to interview health and education professionals as well as others with expertise on the subject or families directly affected by Prevent about their experiences of Prevent. She is happy to anonymize the interviews so the identities of the interviewees are not revealed in the report/briefing papers.
Please email Amrit to arrange to meet in person a a convenient time and place for an informal conversation about your experiences of Prevent.
Research
Bringing together physical and mental health (C. Naylor et al. 2016, The King's Fund). The NHS five year forward view makes the case for the integration of health and social care, primary and specialist care, and physical and mental health care. This report explores in greater detail what this should involve. The report is summarised by Kirsten Lawson for the Mental Elf here.
Cross-national comparative mixed-methods case study of recovery-focused mental health care planning and co-ordination (Simpson, A. et al. 2016, BMC Psychiatry 16:147). This study investigated the views and experiences of stakeholders (service providers, service users and carers) involved in community mental health care and identified factors that facilitate or act as barriers to personalised, collaborative, recovery-focused care. Sarah Carr summarises the study for the Mental Elf and states that "as well as confirming existing findings and explaining more about recovery and personalisation in care planning and co-ordination in community mental health care settings, the study also acts as an assessment of how little has been learned from or changed as a result of years of research on empowerment, personalisation and recovery".
Clinical management following self-harm in a UK-wide primary care cohort (Carr, M. J. et al. 2016, Journal of Affective Disorders, 197, 182-188) Following GP presentation for self-harm, more people receive a prescription for psychotropic medication, than a referral to mental health services. Moreover, if patients belong to a practice in a deprived area, they are 27% less likely to receive a referral to mental health services. Olivia Kirtley and Alys Cole-King discuss this research in more detail here.
Patient experience of negative effects of psychological treatment: results of a national survey (Crawford, M.J et al. 2016, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 208 (3) 260-265. This survey aimed to determine the prevalence of and risk factors for perceived negative effects of psychological treatment for common mental disorders. One in 20 people responding reported lasting bad effects from psychological treatment. One of the most striking findings is that there are much higher rates of long-lasting negative effects of psychological therapy reported both by people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) groups. Keith Laws and Samei Huda discuss this finding in more detail in their article The harms of psychotherapy: are BME & LGBT communities more at risk?
Improving outcomes for people in mental health crisis: a rapid synthesis of the evidence for available models of care (Paton, F. et al. 2016, Health Technol Assess 20(3)) This research aimed to conduct a rapid review of the clinical and cost effectiveness of the care and treatment that people experiencing mental health crisis receive. Caroline Leah summarises the research here.
Blogs
Mental Health in Black and White (Twilah Hiari, Mad in America)
When Homosexuality Came out (of the DSM) (Vivek Datta, Mad in America)
Mental illness is a result of misery, yet still we stigmatise it (Richard Bentall, Guardian Opinion)
Stop Kicking The Cat: How patients can help shift the rule-bound culture of the NHS (Future Patient - musings on patient-led healthcare)
Books
Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness (by Will Hall)
In this collection of interviews and essays Will Hall invites us to rethink what we know about bipolar, psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, medications, and mental illness in society.
Madness, distress and the politics of disablement (edited by Helen Spandler, Jill Anderson and Bob Sapey)
This book explores the challenges of applying disability theory and policy, including the social model of disability, to madness and distress. It brings together leading scholars and activists from Europe, North America, Australia and India, to explore the relationship between madness, distress and disability.
More from the Mental Elf
What has qualitative research ever done for us?
In February 2016, Trisha Greenhalgh and 75 senior academic colleagues from 11 countries wrote a letter calling on the British Medical Journal to rethink their decision to view qualitative research as “low priority,” “unlikely to be highly cited,” “lacking practical value,” or “not of interest to our readers”.
Last month the National Elf Service organised a webinar to bring together experts from the world of mental health qualitative research, to share their experiences, celebrate the achievements of specific studies/programmes, and discuss the challenges currently facing the field.
The following questions were raised:
- What is the most important “landmark” qualitative research study in mental health?
- Is the “quantitative versus qualitative” debate a false dichotomy?
- What is mixed-methods research and how can it help us improve mental health care?
- How can we distinguish good from poor qualitative research?
If you missed the webinar, you can watch the discussion here.
Survivor-led research
For a list of reports, evaluations, strategy documents and publications written by NSUN (sometimes in collaboration with partner organisations and groups) please see our website.
Survivor Research is a virtual collective of independent researchers and trainers, community developers and activists interested in foregrounding the voices of mental health service users/survivors, especially from marginalised and minority ethnic communities. You can find a list of their publications here.
The Survivor Researcher Network
About us
The Survivor Researcher Network (SRN) aims to provide mental health service users and survivors involved and interested in research a forum for networking, sharing information, and supporting each other.
We are keen to acknowledge and promote the diversity of experiences, identities and backgrounds of survivor researchers and to challenge the marginalisation of some communities in mental health research (including user-led research), in terms of access to resources, participation and leadership.
If you would like to share your experiences of survivor research, or if you have anything you would like to share with other SRN members we would love to hear from you!
E-mail Emma (or call 07885 964293).