UKRI has asked the Mental Health Platform to identify research priorities for severe mental illness (SMI) from the perspective of people with lived experience (PWLE), to inform future research funding. Previous priority-setting exercises have addressed mental health broadly or individual conditions, but not research priorities spanning SMI from a lived-experience perspective.
Definition of severe mental illness (SMI)
For this consultation, SMI means mental health conditions or experiences that have had a major or lasting impact on someone’s everyday life. This might affect their relationships, education, work, physical health, independence, safety or the ability to do the things that matter to them.
To take part, you do not need to have a particular diagnosis or to describe yourself as having a “severe mental illness”. We also want to hear from people who care for or support someone whose mental health has affected their life in this way.
Making your suggestions
We are interested in identifying priorities that might be answered now, or in the future. There are no right or wrong answers to the questionnaire, and there is no restriction on what types of suggestions you give. We are particularly interested in questions that researchers, funders and other professionals may not currently be focused on.
You do not need to know anything about research or how to write a research question to answer the questionnaire.
Please avoid including your name, contact details or any other information that could identify you or someone else in your responses.
You might want to think about:
- Why difficulties happen or come back
- Recognising problems earlier or preventing them
- Treatments, medication, therapy or other kinds of support
- Experiences of services and professionals
- Conditions, symptoms or experiences
- Physical health and mental health
- Relationships, family, work, education, housing or finances
- Recovery and living well
- Something important that nobody has properly explained or investigated
FAQs
A priority-setting consultation is a structured process for collecting, reviewing and ranking people’s views about what research should focus on. We will first ask people with lived experience what questions they think researchers should answer, and then ask them to help rank those questions in order of importance.
We’ll bring together responses from people across the Mental Health Platform and our wider networks, including people who have personal experience of mental health difficulties and those who support or care for someone. The questions will then be reviewed and grouped into themes before being ranked in a second survey.
Research doesn’t always focus on the questions that matter most to the people it is intended to benefit. Taking part is a chance to make sure lived experience helps shape what research happens in the future.
You don’t need to be a researcher or have any specialist knowledge to take part. We want to hear what you think is important, what questions you feel remain unanswered, and what you would like future research to address.
Your views will contribute to a set of research priorities that will be shared with UKRI and help inform future research funding and the Mental Health Platform’s research priorities.
The consultation has two phases.
First, we will ask people with lived experience and those who support or care for someone with significant mental health difficulties to suggest research questions and topics that matter to them. We will review these responses, remove duplicates and group the questions into key themes.
In the second phase, we will ask people to rank these research questions and themes in order of importance. You can take part in the second phase whether or not you completed the first survey. The responses from both phases will be brought together to identify the research priorities that matter most to people with lived experience.
Yes. The form will ask for some optional information about you to help us understand whether we have captured a diverse range of experiences from the SMI community. We will not ask for your name, email address or other information that could identify you.
The survey should take between 15 - 20 minutes, depending on your answers. If there is a question you don't wish to answer, you can note this in the text box, as some of the questions require a response.
Your responses will be combined with those of other people with lived experience to identify the research questions and themes that are considered the highest priorities. The findings will be used to help inform future mental health research priorities and funding.
Once the survey closes, we will analyse the responses and use them to identify the highest-priority research questions from a lived experience perspective. The findings will contribute to the Mental Health Platform’s research priorities and will be shared with UKRI to help inform future research funding.
