VMIAC embraces, enables, empowers, & emboldens the lived experience community
ARE YOU A CONSUMER & THINKING ABOUT PARTICIPATING IN RESEARCH?
People with lived experience are often asked to participate in mental health research. Research projects may aim to increase knowledge about what affects our mental health, improve mental health services, or evaluate a new therapy.
These are goals that many of us would like to support. However, not all research is equal, and not all research projects acknowledge, value, or respect the expertise, contributions, and diversity of people with lived experience.
That’s why VMIAC has developed criteria based on lived experience engagement principles to evaluate requests to promote research participation opportunities to our members and other people with lived experience.
View or download our handy Research Participation Checklist designed to help consumers decide whether to participate in a promoted research project.
WHAT KINDS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPATION DOES VMIAC SUPPORT?
Only lived experience-led and other research projects that we identify as meeting our criteria for support are promoted by VMIAC. When we assess projects to be of a high standard, in line with consumer principles, and offering potentially substantial benefits to participants or to improving people’s lives more broadly, we will indicate this in our listings.
While we evaluate research support requests against our lived experience principles, our agreement to promote research participation opportunities to members and people with lived experience does not mean we endorse all aspects of the promoted research projects, or their findings.
We encourage people with lived experience to look at the research opportunities available and consider how comfortable you feel with both the information provided and what the researchers are asking you to do, before making your decision about participating.
EXPERTS IN OUR OWN LIVES
The expertise of people with lived experience of mental health challenges is highly valuable and needs to be central to all mental health research. Too often, lived expertise has been undervalued, under-resourced, and taken for granted by researchers and in research agenda-setting. In the current context of mental health reform in Victoria, we are working to embolden and amplify lived experience voices and leadership in how mental health research is done.
People with lived experience who are involved in research must be valued, acknowledged, and paid fairly for our work and contributions, whether as participants, advisors, or researchers. Traditional power imbalances in research practice must be acknowledged and transformed.
View or download our handy Research Participation Checklist