Lived experience in mental health careLived experience in mental health care
All In The Mind
It’s not always helpful for someone to be labelled as having an illness when they are emotionally distressed. Sometimes simple support can make more of a difference to a person’s outlook. A possible shift in the provision of mental services might be to increase the provision of social justice.
28:52•5 Nov 2017
Lived Experience, Labels and a New Story for Mental Health Care
Episode Overview
- Personal stories of childhood trauma and dissociation can challenge shaming diagnostic language and open up more compassionate ways to talk about distress.
- Seeing suicidal thoughts as meaningful signals of pain and feeling trapped allows people to seek support and care rather than simply suppressing those feelings.
- The CHIME framework (connectedness, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment) highlights that living well matters more than just removing symptoms.
- Mental health services can shift from expert-led treatment to shared decision-making, with clinical input as one resource among natural supports and community.
- Early adverse experiences are a major public health issue, calling for societies that support emotional literacy, reduce violence and welcome difference.
“"We were born to be the amazing, wonderful, damaged, interesting, charismatic, passionate people that we have in us."”
How do people find strength in their journey to emotional recovery? This episode of All In The Mind focuses on how lived experience can reshape mental health care, with a mix of raw honesty, academic thinking and a surprising amount of playfulness.
You’ll hear mental health advocate Flick Gray talk frankly about growing up with painful caregiving relationships, dissociation and shame, and how she relates to her "inner parts", including an eight-year-old part called Max who is "very playful and very strong and brave". Flick explains how a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder felt both clarifying and deeply shaming, and why she now prefers language that makes sense of her story rather than labels that feel cruel.
Flick also speaks about having "a deep relationship with suicide", stressing that suicidal feelings carry meaning about pain and feeling trapped, and that support from "fellow travellers" helps her listen to those feelings without acting on them. She draws on ideas from the hearing voices movement and open dialogue, arguing that more voices and community support, rather than lone experts, can hold fear and uncertainty in mental health settings.
Professor Mike Slade from The University of Nottingham brings in research and a social justice lens. He outlines a major shift from a model where clinical expertise "moves from being centre stage to being one resource amongst others". His CHIME framework – connectedness, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment – comes directly from what people say helps them live well, and he notes that "they don't talk about getting rid of symptoms" so much as building lives worth living.
Together, Flick and Mike question illness-focused language, challenge the overuse of diagnostic labels, and argue for mental health systems that prioritise human rights, citizenship, housing, work and genuine inclusion. It’s a thoughtful mix of personal story and policy big-picture that might make you look at distress, diagnosis and recovery in a very different way. How might your own experiences fit into this broader, more human story of mental health?
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