NSUN has today published a new resource exploring what regularly-used language in mental health means to those with lived experience of mental ill-health, trauma, and distress.
It captures the results of an anonymous survey shared with the NSUN membership in the summer of 2024, which asked people with lived experience to define a range of terms in the context of mental health.
We have brought those definitions together into this publication with the aim of celebrating the plurality of language and acknowledging that many words and terms mean very different things to different people. We hope that this resource, acting as a crowdsourced glossary of terms defined by people with lived experience, can be used and referred to by anyone who would find it helpful.
We encourage and challenge those working in mental health service provision, research, and policy work to carefully consider the power of the language that they use and the implications that it may have. This resource may serve as a starting point.