Survivor Researcher Network News

User-Led Mental Health Study Receives Funding 

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research (SSCR) has awarded Middlesex University funding for a new mental health study. The research team is led by people who have used mental health services and the researchers who will be doing the interviews have experience of mental health problems themselves. 

The research will explore mental health service user perspectives on targeted violence and hostility in the context of adult safeguarding. The Care Act (2014) made changes to adult safeguarding in England, meaning that people who are abused or neglected should be more involved in decisions about keeping safe from harm. In order to make the new policy about safeguarding work in practice, everyone involved needs to have a better idea of what people who might be getting the support think.

The researchers are choosing people with mental health problems to talk to because research shows that they have a high risk of being picked on or attacked. They want to interview people about their fears or experiences of being abused because they have a mental health problem, what they do when this happens and where they go if they are scared or have been victimized because they have mental health problems (and maybe because they are different in other ways, like being black, disabled or gay).

You can read more about the research on the Middlesex University website.  

Watch out for more information next month if you would like to be a study participant. 

Making Whiteness value centred 

SRN member Dr Colin King was given a diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’ and medicated while still in his teens but survived that experience to go on to do social work training and become an Approved Social Worker. He did a PhD and was part of a team that co-authored a report called ‘Race, Values and Models’ for the Mental Health Foundation. Having left social work practice, Colin is now writing a book (on ‘schizophrenia’) and teaches Values-based Practice to social workers and other professionals. He has written extensively on the subject of mental health including ‘They diagnosed me a schizophrenic when I was just a Gemini - The other side of madness’.   

Colin is co-organising the ‘Making Whiteness value centred’ conference at Oxford University in October. The conference aims:

1. To encourage practitioners, academics, policy makers and survivors to reflect on the contributions the theory of whiteness can make to understanding race in mental health.

2. To discuss how whiteness and race can more effectively be used to address the limitations of current diagnostic frameworks.

3. To examine the challenges for coproduction for mental health practices from assessment to intervention in terms of developing a collaborative approach across the colour line.

In the following article he discusses his experience of “researching, analysing and performing inside whiteness as mental health survivor, practitioner, teacher and activist”.

Researching, analysing and performing inside whiteness

by Colin King 

I have witnessed my emotional and cultural death as a mental health survivor struggling for the status of being normal, in an abnormal psychiatric world. I have professionalised my label ‘schizophrenic’ whilst seeking a court of rationality that I attempt to escape. I have over forty years attempted to the ward of my spiritual murder, the external world of the perpetual label, ‘madness’. I have successfully abandoned my love affair of a blackness to seek elevation into a whiteness of acts, values and behaviours, that affords privileges. 

At night I continue to shake, fall into my mask of despair and wake to a world that I want to commit suicide. In this suicide I leave a message, I was never mad, but made mad, I see madness as a sixth sense, invited to detect a whiteness that is visible. Despite the reward from the liberation of the suicide, PhD, MA’s, I plead forgiveness for the black men I have sectioned, hospitalised and the whiteness I failed to confront.

I have now become a self-employed prostitute to the internal knowledge I carry and publicise, a prisoner to a race identity that has no social or political capital, but a visa and passport to a bed or network of survivors who falsely celebrate a connection to my despair. I now watch my son placed in the same regime, he has achieved the pre-determined status of madness, he is me personified captured in the forest of mental health services that remand his self.

I am now in a state of anger, hostility and incapability, I feel my Drapetomania, my sense of mental slavery and loyalty to whiteness that captures my disillusionment. Back to reality of conversing with a rationalised world in which I have no job, sacked after confronting racism in my last teaching job. Liberated to write on my experiences of researching, analysing and performing inside whiteness as mental health survivor, practitioner, teacher and activist.

During this forty-year period, first class accommodation at Maudsley, ECT, ECG, cocktail of medication, physical restraints and holiday bookings at three other mental health institutions, I now await my next hospitalisation but I report and write in those who have created my reality as a Gemini confused as an enforced ‘schizophrenic’.

***

Colin is working to encourage researchers and practitioners to see the benefits of talking openly about remapping race and the epistemology of race. Further details of the 'Making Whiteness value centred' conference will be shared in future editions of the SRN news. 

Research 

Sense and readability: participant information sheets for research studies 

Researchers at Kings College London have produced a paper looking at the quality of participant information sheets. The researchers found that participant information sheets are often overly complicated and hard to understand. McPin have provided a summary of the research and you can access the full report here. 

Children and Young People's Mental Health: State of the Nation 

A report from CentreForum shows that mental healthcare providers refuse to treat an average of 23% of the under-18s referred to them by concerned parents, GPs, teachers and others. The Guardian reports on the study highlighting the finding that some services deny support to those with anorexia unless their BMI is below a certain threshold.

Service User Involvement in Mental Health Care Planning 

Research findings have consistently found that service users are not involved in care planning, despite mental health policy that advocates a collaborative process and evidence that involvement facilitates recovery. Alison Faulkner summarises the research for The Mental Elf website and you can read the full report here. 

Patient outcomes following discharge from secure psychiatric hospitals 

This study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry conducted a a systematic review of studies that have tracked patients after being discharged from a secure psychiatric hospital for criminal behaviour, readmission to psychiatric hospitals and mortality. Laura Hemming, writing for The Mental Elf questions the outcomes included in the study and states that "with the increasing media focus on what happens when people are released from secure psychiatric hospitals, it feels as though there is still a wealth of research to be conducted into exactly how we can improve outcomes for patients in secure forensic settings". 

Blogs and articles 

Recovery: Compromise or Liberation? (Jay Watts, Mad in America) 

Victim Blaming: Childhood Trauma, Mental Illness & Diagnostic Distractions (Liz Milliner, Mad in America) 

Supporting the sustainability of Mad Studies and preventing its co-option (Peter Beresford and Jasna Russo, Disability and Society) 

Why words matter when it comes to mental health (Clare Allen, The Guardian) 

Opportunities at McPin

Final call: respond by Friday 15th April

Community Navigators Research Study  

This  research study is looking for up to 5 people with personal experience of mental health problems to advise on developing and testing a programme of support for mental health service users which aims to increase people’s community connections and reduce loneliness. 

For an initial discussion and more information about joining the working group, please contact Kate Fullerton. tel: 020 7679 9051 k.fullarton@ucl.ac.uk

Please contact Kate by Friday 15th April. 

Service user or carer needed to join Cognitive Bias Modification for Paranoia (CBM-pa) study steering group

McPin is looking for a service user or carer to join the steering group for the Cognitive Bias Modification for Paranoia (CBM-pa) study. You can find out more about the study here.

The steering group meets every six to eight weeks in south London. The study is about seeing if a new approach called cognitive bias modification can help people suffering from paranoia. The study lead is Dr Jenny Yiend from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience (IOPPN). The research is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). For further details please see their website. 

Respond by Friday 15th April 

Opportunity to develop an evaluation framework 

The McPin Foundation is partnering with the National Suicide Prevention Alliance and Suicide Bereavement Support Partnership for a Public Health England funded project to improve support for people bereaved by suicide.

If you have received support following a bereavement due to suicide (for example, individual counselling or attending a group), you might be able to help. McPin need to speak with people who have experience of services supporting people bereaved after suicide to help us develop an evaluation framework. They need to know how people would like surveys to be administered and feedback captured to communicate the impact that services have on peoples’ lives. If you are interested, please e-mail susannegibson@mcpin.org or call 0207 9227876.

Mental Health Workshop

Peer Support: Narratives and disclosure - how to share our experiences in a safe way

The Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham, 17 June 9.30 - 4.30                                                                                                                       

This one day workshop will be of interest to professionals and trainees from health and social care organisations who want to develop their thinking around using narratives at work. Key aims of the session:

•           Consider the practical uses of narratives in supporting others

•           Receive the latest information about the implementation of peer support

•           Learn story sharing techniques used by support workers

•           Reflect on the ethics and values of sharing your story

•           Reflect on your boundaries of what and how much to share

•           Understand the challenges of disclosure for a range of people

Book your place  by emailing karen.sugars@nottshc.nhs.uk 

University of Worcester - PhD Opportunities

PhD 1: Exploring borderline personality disorder diagnosis in bipolar disorder in the UK

Closing date: Tuesday 7th June 2016

PhD 2:  Adult mental health with a focus on student suicide prevention [2 studentships]

Closing date: Tuesday 7th June 2016

For further information please see their website. 

Call for proposals  - NIHR School for Social Care Research 

Supporting development of research capacity in adult social care in England

The NIHR School for Social Care Research are inviting applications from individuals committed to adult social care research who would benefit from NIHR SSCR support to further their research careers in this field.

Applicants can be at any stage of their research career – pre-doctoral, doctoral, post-doctoral – but not yet experienced enough to be established as independent, or more established researchers. Applicants must show a commitment to establishing a long-term career in adult social care research.

For further details please see here.       

Job Opportunity

Disability Rights UK: Programme Officer 

To work on the Disability Research on Independent Living & Learning (DRILL) Programme - England

Salary £28,000 per annum - Full time 35hrs per week

Closing date for applications is 9am on Monday 25 April. Interviews for shortlisted candidates will take place on Thursday 5 May

More info and how to apply, please visit here

The 2nd Annual Conference on Peer-supported Open Dialogue 

Jointly organised by North East London NHS Foundation Trust and the Academy of Peer-supported Open Dialogue.

Monday 25 April, 2016 (10am - 6pm), Logan Hall, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL Click here for more information on the location

At the conference you will hear from the first UK staff trained in Peer-supported Open Dialogue and peers working in Open Dialogue teams across the UK. Click here to read more about the POD approach. 

Tickets for the day conference are donation based - pay as much or as little as you choose, starting at £1. Click here to buy tickets

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).