STELLER - Supporting the Transition into Everyday Life of Lived Experience Research
One Door Mental Health is dedicated to being at the forefront of knowledge about mental illness. As part of this commitment, we have established a Research Trust Fund. The Research Trust Fund of the Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW Ltd is currently inviting applications from individuals or research teams in the field of psychosocial research in schizophrenia for funding of up to $100,000 for a single project over two years or support of a doctoral student for up to $30,000 over two years.
A recent grant was awarded to Dr Anne Honey and her research team at the University of Sydney for the STELLER project.
Lived-experience research illuminates the experiences of, and is conducted by, people who have experience of mental health challenges. The findings from lived-experience research have the potential to help consumers in their recovery journeys, for example, by imparting wisdom and inspiring hope. Yet most consumers 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 aimed to translate lived-experience research findings into user-friendly resources, disseminate those resources to consumers via peer workers and evaluate their accessibility and usefulness using a non-randomised experimental study.
User-friendly and creative resources were developed for six lived-experience research articles in collaboration with peer workers and UTS senior design students. They addressed the topics of hope, personal medicine, concepts of recovery, what helps recovery, getting physical health care, and meaningful activity.
These resources are currently being introduced to study participants by our five research assistants, who are also peer workers at SESLHD. So far, we have 28 participants and hope to recruit another 12. Engagement with the resources and feedback from participants to date has been extremely positive. Consumers have liked that the resources are “creative”, “pithy” and do not “beat around the bush”. Knowing that people were researching consumers’ experiences helped some to “realise that my experiences are important” and a couple talked about sharing the resources with a friend or family member. One consumer said “I loved the variety of resources which have shown me that recovery can take many paths ... It’s made me start listening to my inner self and speak up for what I want in my life rather than just pleasing others who like ticking boxes”. Different consumers preferred different formats and levels of detail indicating that a variety of options is desirable for translating lived-experience research. The research team are excited to begin formal data analysis once all assessments are completed in October.
Find out more about One Door Mental Health's research grants here.