Lived Experience of Diverse Mental Health Adversities
In conjunction with a large focus on the lived experience of self-injury, we have been involved in projects that aspire to understand a range of mental health adversities. These are often - but are not necessarily - related to self-injury. The specific topics we’ve research in this regard are diverse in scope and are the product of the rich insights and ideas lab members bring to the team when they join us and our robust collaborations with colleagues across the globe. In what follows, we highlight just a few of these areas with reference to a few recent papers; for a full list of publications, please visit our Publications page.
One area that our lab has focused on is that of eating disorders. Here, we have conducted research examining online content and messaging related to eating disorders, including how such communication has similarity with yet differences from online communication pertinent to self-injury. More recently, and led by Dr. Therese Kenny (a recent PhD graduate from our team), we have been involved with understanding people’s lived experience of eating disorders and its recovery; this led to a robust line of research, including a novel, person-centred and ecological model of eating disorder recovery (see Kenny & Lewis, 2023).
Our team has also conducted research in the area of suicidology Here, we have again examined online communication, including the degree to which news media outlets have adhered to established guidelines for reporting on suicide. Given the link between self-injury and suicide, we have also been involved with an array of projects centred on suicide. For example, and led by another recently graduate PhD student, Dr. Tyler Pritchard, we have been involved with research on rural suicide. Among several papers, this includes a comprehensive review of the literature concerning how rurality has been operationalised and what is known about suicide risk factors in the rural suicide literature. Also within this area, our team has an interest in people’s lived experience and related needs with respect to suicide bereavement and amongst suicide survi
To give just one more example, another doctoral student on our team (Joanna Collaton) has conducted important participatory research involving the conception and meaning of justice amongst women who have experienced sexual violence. Joanna’s research has contributed meaningfully to the field by way of expanding extant views of what constitutes justice for women and the process by which justice can be realised.