Stefan Rennick-Egglestone

Dr. Stefan Rennick-Egglestone is a mental health researcher working in the Institute of Mental Health (Nottingham, UK). His recent work has focused on ethical, legal and methodological challenges in online trials, and on the use of lived experience narratives as an active ingredient in digital healthcare interventions. He has a PhD from the University of Nottingham looking at how novel rehabilitation technologies can find a place in the homes of stroke survivors. Stefan brings his own prior lived experience of disabling mental health problems to his work, and advocates for greater inclusion of lived experience perspectives in healthcare research and practice. He is the co-founder of the Institute of Mental Health Peer Research Academy [https://institutemh.org.uk/news/news/1989-peer-research-academy-launches-to-support-mental-health-researchers-with-lived-experience], which will support lived experience researchers, and challenges structural barriers to success. 

Title of the speech

Working in the margins: how researchers with lived experience influence research, and what we can do to support them

Short abstract

Researchers with personal lived experience of mental health problems benefit the quality of mental health research in many ways, from drawing on their knowledge to enable equitable, productive and destigmatised interactions with participants, through to prioritising the selection of research questions and implementation approaches that have the capacity to make a difference to people who are struggling. We need a pipeline by which people with lived experience can enter research professions, and progress through to leadership roles. Continued work to enable such a pipeline requires us to address known challenges associated with the causes and phenomenology of mental health problems and their impact on current and potential lived experience researchers, such as inequalities in educational access, and the raised emotional labour of lived experience research. In this keynote, I will talk about how lived experience researchers benefit health research, and how we can enable them to succeed.