‘Experts by experience’ workshops with Rethink Mental Illness

We are delighted to be working in partnership with Rethink Mental Illness to explore the ethical issues raised by the use of digital technology in mental healthcare.

Rethink Mental Illness provide expert information and services, and campaign to improve the lives of people severely affected by mental illness and their family, friends, and carers.

We have commissioned Rethink Mental Illness to run engagement sessions with people with lived experience of mental health problems, using their insights and knowledge to help draw out and develop the important themes in our upcoming bioethics briefing note on the use of technology in mental healthcare.

A co-production workshop with ‘experts by experience’ took place in December, where we developed a set of materials and questions on which to base our discussions. We are using these materials and questions as a basis for engagement sessions throughout January.

We would like to thank all the people who took part in these workshops for their extremely valuable contributions and for talking about their personal experiences so articulately and honestly.

We will incorporate what we heard into our briefing note and share the findings with policy makers, health professionals, patient groups, and others involved in caring for people with mental health problems. A short report summarising the outcomes of the engagement sessions to be published alongside our bioethics briefing note.

We look forward to sharing the findings and publishing our briefing note in the spring. If you wish to receive a copy, please email us at press@nuffieldbioethics.org to be added to a recipient list.