Dr Veenu Gupta - Exploring the Identity and Support Needs of Lived Experience Researchers and Providers

Those who bring lived experiences into professional contexts navigate personal and professional identities that sometimes sit in conflict with each other due to perceived stigma, and discrimination. They might experience epistemic injustice due to intersectionality. It might be difficult to have a clear sense of self due to this. Part 1 of this presentation will discuss the methods and themes of a systematic narrative review and conceptual framework aiming to understand the identity of lived experience researchers and providers. This identifies how service user and professional identities are sometimes integrated, unintegrated or liminal. The EMERGES framework is developed that influences these positions: Empowerment, Motivation to integrate, Empathy of the self and others, Recovery model and medical model, Growth and transformation, Exclusion, and Survivor roots. Part 2 goes on to explore gaps in the literature and will go on to explore the identity of groups in clinical psychology training of, experts by experience, carers, trainee clinical psychologists and experts by qualification, using focus groups to recreate these social identities. The themes will be presented and contextualised into the EMERGES framework. Part 3 brings together learning from across these studies and presents findings from a Q methodology study to identify the supervisory needs of lived experience researchers. 3 types of lived experience researchers are identified, each with unique needs, which will be described and related to existing and novel supervisory methods to support lived experience researchers. 

Registration in advance is required: Register to attend 

About the Speaker

Dr Veenu Gupta, Assistant Professor of Lived Experience Research, Durham University

Dr Veenu Gupta is a Clinical Psychology PhD graduate from the University of Liverpool and is now an Assistant Professor in Lived Experience Research at Durham University in the Institute of Medical Humanities. She has lived experience of psychosis and experience working as an expert by experience for some clinical psychology courses and as a service user advisor to the National Clinical Audit of Psychosis. In these roles, she brings her insight into mental health services to inform the training of healthcare professionals and mental health research. These experiences guided her PhD research where she realised working in lived experience roles had a profound impact on her identity, recovery and empowerment. She then aimed to understand if these roles impacted others who bring lived experiences into professional spheres in similar or different ways and was particularly interested in how best to support them.  

This seminar is free to attend and is open to all, both within and outside the University.  Attendance is possible both in person and on zoom, registration details can be found above.  Registration in advance is required.