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Showcasing M-RIC’s progress to the NIHR

On Friday 13 June, members of the M-RIC team were delighted to visit London to showcase our work to the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) Mission.

M-RIC is one of the two key demonstrator sites to be awarded funding from the NIHR MH-TRC Mission. The NIHR MH-TRC Mission brings together leading investigators in experimental medicine and early-stage translational mental health research from across the UK to accelerate discoveries into clinical practice.

The showcase event was an opportunity to connect with other centres of excellence to collaborate and present our groundbreaking research to improve future mental health services and treatments.

Co-Directors of M-RIC, Prof Dan Joyce and Prof Iain Buchan attended the event as well as Senior Research Manager, Dr Jade Thai, M-RIC Head of Operations (Research programmes), Dr Claire Smith, M-RIC Programme Manager, Paul Burdett and M-RIC Public Engagement Research Coordinator, Gail Faragher.

They were proud to demonstrate the excellent progress we have made across our six research work packages and how we have put the voice of service users and carers at the heart of our research through our commitment to patient and public involvement and engagement.

Co-lead service user and carer representative (SUCR), Terry Bryant and Craig Mackie (lived experience member on the NIHR MH-TRC’s psychosis workstream based in East Anglia) collaborated on a presentation demonstrating the unique perspective offered to research teams by service users and carers. They performed a script which compared the journey of a public member in mental health research to getting prepared to board a plane. It was a light-hearted yet poignant way to start the day and was well received by attending research teams.

We also discussed our exciting future research plans which will help improve care and treatments for our local populations.

You can find out more about how we are involving service users and the public in our work on our Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement page.

Photo of the M-RIC team at the event. From left to right: Prof Dan Joyce, Paul Burdett, Dr Jade Thai, Gail Faragher, Dr Claire Smith, Prof Iain Buchan, Terry Bryant.

Photo of the M-RIC team at the event. From left to right: Prof Dan Joyce, Paul Burdett, Dr Jade Thai, Gail Faragher, Dr Claire Smith, Prof Iain Buchan, Terry Bryant.