Accessibility Tools
Ideas of and issues in engagement and participation including overcoming barriers.
In an important and provocative study reported in this issue of Psychiatric Services, Cook and colleagues detail findings stemming from a rigorous and well-powered investigation of self-directed care for adults with serious mental illness living in Texas. The investigators found significant improvements in multiple key domains, including recovery, self-esteem, coping, autonomy support, and employment and education, all at no additional cost.
This website is an outcome of the ARC Linkage Project Options for Supported Decision-Making to Enhance the Recovery of People with Severe Mental Health Problems (SDM) project.
Here, you can find out about what it is like to experience severe mental health problems by seeing and hearing people’s stories on film and audio-recording.
Our researchers travelled around Victoria to talk to 29 people from a range of backgrounds who have received various psychiatric diagnoses including psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. Many had received more than one diagnosis over the years.
Find out what people said about their experiences of diagnosis, medication, hospitalization, experiences with health professionals, discrimination, personal recovery, and their views about how they could best be supported by health professionals in making decision about treatments and other aspects of their lives.
You can start by watching an introduction from Indigo Daya and a preview of some of the interview video clips below. You can also go straight to the ‘Talking Points’ on the website, or explore ‘People’s Profiles’ to learn more about the people we spoke to.
We’re continuing our conversations about the findings of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. These findings will reshape mental health services, not just in Victoria but potentially across Australia.
In this episode we talk about some of the recommendations for reform specific to carers.
The royal commission findings have specific recommendations that will affect carers, including eight family and carer led centres across Victoria and elevating the leadership and promoting the valued role of family members and carers throughout the mental health and wellbeing system. Our guests today are Karen Rule and Susan Lovegrove, two women with lived experience of caring for children (now adults) with mental health conditions and disability and they have also channelled this to provide their learnings and experience for advocacy and support to others.
Our first episode of Get Real was about the experience of carers, and it’s our most listened to episode to date, so we know that there’s an interest around the challenges and needs of this very important group of people.
Purpose: To examine nursing students’ perceptions of Experts by Experience impact on theoretical and practical learning.
Design and methods: Qualitative exploratory study involving focus groups with undergraduate nursing students from five European countries and Australia. Data were analysed thematically.
Findings: Participants described positive impacts as: bridging the theory and practice gap through first-hand experience, including sub-themes: bringing theory to life ; can’ t be taught any other way, and, innovative teaching methods fuelling curiosity. Relevance to clinical practice : Integrating theory and practice is key for quality mental health nursing practice . Experts by Experience can potentially contribute to reducing this enduring gap.
Shared decision-making (SDM) between mental health medication prescribers and service users is a central pillar in the recovery approach, because it supports people experiencing mental ill-health to explore their care and treatment options to promote their well-being and to enable clinicians to gain knowledge of the choices the service user prefers.
SDM is receiving increasing recognition both in the delivery of physical and mental health services; and as such, is of significance to current practice. As an expert-by-experience with over 30 years of receiving mental health treatment, I have made many choices about taking medication and accessing other forms of support. The experiences of SDM have been variable over my career as a service user: both encounters when I have felt utterly disempowered and interactions when I have led decision-making process based on my expertise-by-experience. In this article, I recount two experiences of exploring care and treatment options: firstly, a discharge planning meeting; and secondly, the choice to take medication over the long-term, despite the side effects. The article will explore both opportunities and barriers to effective shared decision-making, as well as skills and processes to facilitate this approach. The need to balance power between service users and professionals in this interaction is highlighted, including the need to respect expertise built on lived experience, alongside that of clinical expertise. This narrative is framed within an autoethnographic approach which allows me to contextualize my personal experiences in the wider environment of mental health care and support.
The National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum and the National Primary Health Network Mental Health Lived Experience Engagement Network acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters on which we work and live on across Australia. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters, culture and community. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
“A lived experience recognises the effects of ongoing negative historical impacts and or specific events on the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It encompasses the cultural, spiritual, physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of the individual, family or community.
“People with lived or living experience of suicide are those who have experienced suicidal thoughts, survived a suicide attempt, cared for someone through a suicidal crisis, been bereaved by suicide or having a loved one who has died by suicide, acknowledging that this experience is significantly different and takes into consideration Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples ways of understanding social and emotional wellbeing.” - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience Centre
We welcome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to this site and invite them to provide any feedback or items for inclusion.
We also recognise people with lived and living experience of mental ill-health and recovery and the experience of people who are carers, families, kin, or supporters.