Lived Experience of Distress

Supported by funding from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), Leverhulme, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Wellcome trust, our research group advances psychological understandings of mental health challenges and service use across a diverse range of groups, including children and young people, general adult, Black and Minority ethnic groups, forensic services and LGBTQ+ groups.

We hold established and emerging links with researchers across the globe, including scholars in the Global South and North. As mental health challenges continue to rise, particularly among the most disadvantaged in society, our mission is to alleviate this burden of inequality.

Collaborating closely with individuals who experience distress, we leverage a broad range of methodologies, both traditional and innovative. These include Randomized Controlled Trials, qualitative and visual methods, memory work and mixed methods studies. Embracing a user-led ethos and democratization of knowledge production, we explore how service users, lived experience experts and practitioners can collaborate effectively in the improvement of research protocols and service provision more generally.

Our research on distress and mental health covers issues of memory, the environment and space, trauma, family dynamics, designs of cities and inpatient services, sexuality, help-seeking, inequalities, service use and discrimination. Our work on mental health has directly fed into local and national policy and service delivery improvements.

With a wealth of expertise including trial design, experimentation, visual methods and qualitative methodologies and Randomized Controlled Trials, we are at the forefront of innovative approaches to understand the conditions of living that lead to distress and how best to tackle these complex psychological and social issues.