IMH Seminar Series - Creating public benefit from recovery narratives

Published narratives describing recovery from a range of health problems are now publicly available, on a substantial scale. In mental health, descriptions of mental health recovery can be found in the biographies of public figures, but mental health recovery narratives are also regularly published by people who are not in the public eye. Examples included books describing psychosis recovery and recovery processes where racism has been a contributing a factor. Recovery narratives are widely shared online, including through curated collections, and individually, including through YouTube videos and posts on online forums. Engaging with recovery narratives has the potential to create benefit; for example, clinicians have described greater demand for bipolar diagnoses, due to people reading an autobiography published by Stephen Fry. In this talk, Stefan Rennick-Egglestone will describe the existing evidence on the impact of recovery narratives on those who read, watch, or listen to them. The main focus will be on evidence developed by the Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) study, including through describing findings from two RCTs of a web-based digital health intervention providing access to a collection of mental health recovery narratives, one of which found benefits to quality of life and meaning in life. Evidence on recovery narrative impact through anti-stigma campaigns, and preliminary evidence around recovery narratives and alcohol misuse, will also be described.

About the Speaker 

Dr Stefan Rennick-Egglestone (Principal Research Fellow, University of Nottingham, UK)

Stefan is a mental health researcher working in the Institute of Mental Health (Nottingham, UK). From 2017 to 2023, he was the co-ordinator for the NEON study. This was an NIHR-funded Programme Grant for Applied Research, which ran from 2017 to 2023. Through NEON, Stefan has been deeply involved in work to examine how organisations can use mental health recovery stories in an ethical and responsible manner, and hence avoid misuse of what can be very sensitive material. Stefan brings his own lived experience of disabling mental health problems to his work, and advocates for greater inclusion of lived experience perspectives in healthcare research and practice. He has a PhD from the University of Nottingham, looking at how novel rehabilitation technologies can find a place in the homes of stroke survivors. He has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.

This Seminar is free to attend and is open to all.  Registration in advance is required for both online and in-person attendance.