Supporting the Translation into Everyday Life of Lived Experience Research
Lived-experience research illuminates the experiences of, and is conducted by, people who have experience of mental health challenges, sometime in collaboration with other researchers.
The findings from lived-experience research can help consumers in their recovery journeys, for example by imparting wisdom and inspiring hope. Yet many people do not even know that lived-experience research exists, and it can be difficult to access.
The STELLER project (Supporting the Translation into Everyday Life of Lived-Experience Research) is a collaboration between researchers with and without lived-experience. We aim to translate lived-experience research findings into user-friendly resources and let people know about the research so that they can use it as a tool for recovery.
With funding from One Door Mental Health, and in collaboration with peer workers and designers, we developed a suite of six user-friendly resources to show the findings of six lived experience research studies. Formats included a podcast, magazine, workbook, ‘hope box’, portraits and playing cards. We evaluated those resources in a research project, which you can find out more about here.
In our study, the resources were presented to people by peer workers, who were seen as the ideal people to bring lived experience research resources to people recovering from mental health challenges. Our peer workers were enthusiastic about the potential for resources to be incorporated into peer work beyond the research project.
Using feedback from the evaluation, the STELLER team made changes to the resources and are pleased to make the resources freely available in “Do it yourself” (DIY) format. While we see the resources as perfect for use by peer workers to use with their clients, there is no reason why other support workers cannot use them, and people who are going about a recovery journey are also welcome to download and use the resources for themselves.The DIY kit consists of an introductory manual explaining the resources and how they are designed to be used, electronic versions of the resources, and a manual for each resource, including background information, instructions for printing/constructing the resources (including estimated budgets) and guidelines for using the resources.
Summaries of the lived experience research are at the links in the links below. You can access the DIY kits here.
- CONCEPTS OF RECOVERY: Recovery means different things to different people. This research looked at the different ways people thought about recovery and what difference it made to them. The resource is a podcast of an interview with the authors.
- WHAT HELPS RECOVERY: This research identified the many different things that people with lived experience said helped them in their recovery. The resource is in the form of portraits with handwritten quotes and explanation of the themes from the study.
- HOPE: Hope is usually seen as critical for recovery, but it doesn’t just arrive by itself. This research describes how people with lived experience are active in finding and maintaining their hope. The resource is a “hope box” containing paper cranes, a story of hope and quotes from the research.
- PERSONAL MEDICINE: Personal medicines are not like pharmaceutical medicines. They are the non-pharmaceutical strategies that people use to help them get and stay well. This research investigates how people develop and use personal medicine. The resources is a workbook.
- GETTING PHYSICAL HEALTH CARE: Sometimes people who experience mental health issues have trouble getting proper care for physical health problems. In this research, consumers refused to accept this situation, and talked about the strategies they used to get good physical health care. The resources is a graphically designed card deck illuminating 11 themes and playable as a game.
- MEANINGFUL ACTIVITY: This research talks about how doing activities that are meaningful to you can help to change how you think and feel. The resource is a magazine about different types of meaningful activities and how people used them.
We are always seeking to improve and extend our resources. If you have any feedback, questions or suggestions, please feel free to email info@stellerhub.com.