Many mental health professionals have also used mental health services. What role should their personal experience play in their clinical practice - if any? - a commentary
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"Purpose: This study aims to explore the perspectives of psychiatrists with lived experiences and what their considerations are upon integrating the personal into the professional realm. Design/methodology/approach: As part of a qualitative participatory research approach, participant observations during two years in peer supervision sessions (15 sessions with 8 psychiatrists with lived experiences), additional interviews as part of member feedback and a focus group were thematically analysed. Findings: Although the decision to become a psychiatrist was often related to personal experiences with mental distress and some feel the need to integrate the personal into the professional, the actual use of lived experiences appears still in its early stages of development. Findings reveal three main considerations related to the personal (3.1), professionality (3.2) and clinical relevance (3.3) comprising 11 facilitators and 9 barriers to harness lived experiences. Research limitations/implications: This study was conducted locally and there are no similar comparable studies known. It was small in its size due to its qualitative nature and with a homogeneous group and therefore may lack generalisability. Practical implications: Future directions to further overcome shame and stigma and discover the potential of lived experiences are directed to practice, education and research. Originality/value: Psychiatrists with lived experiences valued the integration of experiential knowledge into the professional realm, even though being still under development. The peer supervision setting in this study was experienced as a safe space to share personal experiences with vulnerability and suffering rather than a technical disclosure. It re-sensitised participants to their personal narratives, unleashing its demystifying, destigmatising and humanising potential."
This workshop is about sharing how including experts by experience benefits all those who areinvolved in social work (education) and contributes to change the nature and discourse of social workeducation and research. Participants in this workshop will learn about our learned lessons and areinvited to contribute their own ideas, to further develop the employment of people with lived experiencein social work..Faculty members at the Applied University of Amsterdam, (one of) the oldest and largest universitiesfor social work in the world, felt that social work education was lacking something very vital: the voicesof the people that it’s all about. Therefore, experts by experience, people who have been or are on theother side of the fence of social and mental health services and are able to use their experiences in aqualified manner, are invited to join social work education programs. Together with students and socialworkers they reflect on an extensive list of issues, for example, the importance of humane contact, theloopholes in the welfare system, the omnipresence of prejudice and power lingering in social andmental health services also, and the thin line between being an accepted member of the system andbeing a person in need. The overall positive responses affirm that hearing the perspective ofexperience helps students to gain a profounder understanding of the complex issues people inpractice are facing and their own role as social workers.Structurally collaborating with experts of experience, our university holds a unique position. We areregularly approached by other academic and social organisations to introduce our unconventional wayof teaching whilst warranting a high educational standard. We believe that incorporating livedexperience as an equal source of knowledge should be at the core of all social work education andresearch.
In de lerarenopleiding wordt aandacht besteed aan het ontwikkelen van pedagogisch handelen waarbij aangesloten wordt bij de ‘bekwaamheidseisen voor leraren basisonderwijs’. Het gaat dan om de ontwikkeling van pedagogische kennis en kunde en het stimuleren van bewustwording van het eigen handelen. Het expliciteren van het pedagogisch handelen van leraren is vaak nog lastig en blijft impliciet. Aanstaande leraren lijken zich wel bewust van het belang van hun pedagogische opdracht, maar kunnen hun pedagogisch handelen soms lastig verwoorden, onderbouwen of expliciteren. Zo ook bij het creëren van een oefenplaats voor burgerschapsvorming. Het ontbreekt hen aan taal om situaties te herkennen en hun pedagogisch handelen te duiden, terwijl ze er wel degelijk vorm aan geven. Dit onderzoeksproject heeft als doel om (aanstaande) leraren te ondersteunen bij het expliciteren van hun pedagogische opdracht bij het creëren van een oefenplaats voor burgerschapsvorming. Met behulp van de centrale vraag: “Op welke wijze kunnen alledaagse ervaringen – gericht op pedagogisch handelen bij het creëren van een oefenplaats voor burgerschapsvorming – benut worden om het handelen van (aanstaande) leraren te verstevigen?” wil de postdoc inzicht creëren in: - de manieren om alledaagse pedagogische ervaringen tot uitdrukking te brengen; en - de manier waarop deze ervaringen gebruikt kunnen worden om (aanstaande) leraren te ondersteunen bij de bewustwording van hun pedagogisch handelen en het zodoende te verstevigen. Het startpunt voor bewustwording is het expliciteren van alledaagse pedagogische ervaringen, zogenaamde lived experiences. Deze zijn de basis voor reflectie, dialoog met anderen en daarmee bewustwording. Het delen van verhalen over praktijkervaringen wordt gezien als een belangrijk startpunt bij het ontwikkelen van pedagogisch handelen . Bovenstaande sluit aan bij het instellingsplan 2017-2022 genaamd ‘Le(ra)ren met Lef’ en het onderzoeksprofiel van het onderzoekscentrum. De hbo-postdoc besteedt 50% van haar tijd aan onderzoek, de andere 50% wordt besteed aan het geven van onderwijs.
Society continues to place an exaggerated emphasis on women's skins, judging the value of lives lived within, by the colour and condition of these surfaces. This artistic research will explore how the skin of a painting might unpack this site of judgement, highlight its objectification, and offer women alternative visualizations of their own sense of embodiment. This speculative renovation of traditional concepts of portrayal will explore how painting, as an aesthetic body whose material skin is both its surface and its inner content (its representations) can help us imagine our portrayal in a different way, focusing, not on what we look like to others, but on how we sense, touch, and experience. How might we visualise skin from its ghostly inner side? This feminist enquiry will unfold alongside archival research on The Ten Largest (1906-07), a painting series by Swedish Modernist Hilma af Klint. Initial findings suggest the artist was mapping traditional clothing designs into a spectral, painterly idea of a body in time. Fundamental methods research, and access to newly available Af Klint archives, will expand upon these roots in maps and women’s craft practices and explore them as political acts, linked to Swedish Life Reform, and knowingly sidestepping a non-inclusive art history. Blending archival study with a contemporary practice informed by eco-feminism is an approach to artistic research that re-vivifies an historical paradigm that seems remote today, but which may offer a new understanding of the past that allows us to also re-think our present. This mutuality, and Af Klint’s rhizomatic approach to image-making, will therefore also inform the pedagogical development of a Methods Research programme, as part of this post-doc. This will extend across MA and PhD study, and be further enriched by pedagogy research at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles, and Konstfack, Stockholm.
We had been involved in the redesign of the 4 Period Rooms of the Marquise Palace, also called the Palace of Secrets, in Bergen op Zoom. This design was based on the biography of a historical figure: Marie Anne van Arenberg, whose dramatic life was marked by secrets. Each of the 4 rooms represents a turning moment in Marie Anne’s story: the official marriage, the secret marriage and the betrayal, the dilemma and choice, with, in a final room, the epilogue. These different episodes are reflected in the way the rooms are furnished: the ballroom, the bedroom, the dining room. The Secret Marquise as design and exhibition has brought more visitors to the museum. As designers and researchers, however, we were interested in understanding more about this success, and, in particular, in understanding the visitors experience, both emotionally and sensorially at different moments/situations during the story-driven experience.In the fall of 2021, the visitors’ lived experience was evaluated using different approaches: a quantitative approach using biometric measurements to register people’s emotions during their visit, and a qualitative one consisting of a combination of observations, visual imagery, and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).Qualitatively, our aim was to understand how respondents made sense of Marie Anne’s story in the way in which this was presented throughout the exhibition. We specifically looked at the personal context and frame of reference (e.g., previous experiences, connection to the visitor’s own life story, associations with other stories from other sources). In the design of the rooms, we used a combination of digital/interactive elements (such as a talking portrait, an interactive dinner table, an interactive family painting), and traditional physical objects (some 17th century original objects, some reproductions from that time). The second focal point of the study is to understand how these different elements lead the visitors experience.
