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Research offers hope: M-RIC welcomes new service user and carer representatives and public advisors

Hope was an important theme at a recent Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) event in Liverpool to celebrate the recruitment of 10 new service user and carer representatives and over 30 public advisors.

The event, which was held at M-RIC’s headquarters in the Civic Health Innovation Labs, was a chance for M-RIC’s new service user and carer representatives and public advisors to meet with researchers, healthcare professionals, data scientists and the patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) team.

The event included presentations from our research leads including M-RIC Co-Directors Prof Iain Buchan and Prof Nusrat Husain as well as Dr Lesley Booth MBE, Patient and Public Involvement, Engagement and Participation Lead Coordinator for the Mental Health Mission and Jahanara Miah, M-RIC’s PPIE lead, who outlined the involvement and engagement plans moving forward..

The welcome event ended on a powerful note when some of the service user and carer representatives and public advisors spoke about why they are involved in M-RIC and their hopes for the project.

M-RIC’s recently recruited service user and carer representatives are patients and carers with lived experience of using mental healthcare. They will become important members of our research teams for our six work packages helping to shape and inform our research.

M-RIC has also recruited a larger pool of public advisors who are service users, carers, third sector representatives and members of the public with an interest in research who want to support M-RIC by contributing their ideas and views at meetings, workshops and events.

Gail Faragher, M-RIC Public Engagement Research Coordinator said:

“In order to improve mental health research, we need patients to be involved in research design – that is M-RIC’s mission. We want to create a model which can be a blueprint for other research programmes.

“Although, we are in the early stages of our patient and public engagement and engagement work, we have already been inspired by the commitment of our service users and public advisors and what they hope to achieve – from personal health improvements to wanting to give something back and make a positive change to future mental healthcare.”

Don Bryant, Lead Service User Representative said: “Patient and public involvement and engagement is embedded at every stage of M-RIC. Service users and carers will be fully engaged and sit side by side with our researchers. They will have equal responsibilities and have a say throughout the project.”

Find out more about M-RIC patient and public involvement and engagement activity and how you can get involved here.