Survivor Researcher Network Manifesto: Mental health knowledge built by service users and survivors
When knowledge about mental health is created from the perspectives of people with lived experience of mental distress, a very different kind of research evidence emerges.
Survivor and service user research is carried out from the perspective of people who have experienced mental or emotional distress.
It is very different from traditional Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in research because service users and survivors have control over the research process.
This type of ‘user-led’ or ‘user-controlled’ research has grown and developed from the political roots of survivor activism that seek to challenge the psychiatric system, bio-medical ‘illness’ models and collectively develop different forms of knowledge based on lived experience of mental distress.
An increasing number of service users and survivors are now involved in research in mental health in England. But service user and survivor-led research is an independent discipline in its own right.
The Survivor Researcher Network (SRN) is an independent, user-controlled and diverse network for all mental health service users and survivors who are engaged in or interested in research.
The SRN Manifesto has been written by the volunteer members of the Survivor Researcher Network working group who come from a range of academic and independent survivor research backgrounds. It sets out the background and context to survivor and service user research and our aims and values as a network
The full version of the manifesto and a summary document are available.
If you would like to join the Survivor Researcher Network please contact info@nsun.org.uk