Service users and carers

We work closely with service users and carers in the design and development of our studies. It is important for us to listen to the experiences and opinions of patients, and their family members, friends or carers, who have been involved with mental health services.

Your opinion matters

Some of our research projects ask for your opinions on specific aspects of patient care and service provision. Previously, we have asked about experiences of risk and safety assessment and your views on personality disorder and psychiatric in-patient services.

Join our Lived Experience Advisory Panel

Are you interested in helping us develop our research to understand how services can help prevent suicide and self-harm? Have you, or a family member, been affected by suicidal behaviour or self-harm? Mutual Support for Mental Health Research (MS4MH-R) is a group of people who have experience of self-harm, suicidality, or mental illness as either patients or carers, who use their wealth of perspectives, insights and experience to help researchers at the University of Manchester in the design, delivery, and sharing of mental health research. If you would like to share your thoughts on how we present our research findings, or give your opinion on adverts, information sheets and report drafts for research studies, please email ncish@manchester.ac.uk to express your interest. We have opportunities to contribute in person at our informal discussion groups, and to contribute virtually by email. No previous experience of research is required and you would be reimbursed for your time.

Future studies

Future work seeking the experiences and views of patients of mental health services will be published on this website and also on our Twitter account.

Our reports

View our latest NCISH reports, including related videos, infographics detailing what our findings mean for your care, and summaries.

Poems inspired by our work

As writer-in-residence for NHS North West R&D, Char March wrote a series of poems to help us understand the power of creativity in conveying our messages.