CoAct for Mental Health: a hands-on workshop and a conversation co-presented by Co-Researchers and academics.
Creators: name: Bonhoure, Isabelle
name: Figueras, Amanda
name: Mateu, Assumpta
name: Perelló, Josep
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: citizen science
citizen social science
mental health
co-researchers
social support networks
chatbot

description: WHO recently stated in the World mental health report "Transforming mental health for all" (2022) that "Valuing the insight of people with lived experience of mental health conditions, and giving them voice, choice and influence in multiple aspects of the mental health care system, is a vital step towards transforming mental health worldwide." This is precisely what the CoAct for Mental Health project has put into practice, in the frame of the 3-years CoAct project, financed by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 873048 and done in collaboration with the Catalan Federation of Mental Health (Federació Salut Mental Catalunya). The main role of this Barcelona-based project was taken by Co-Researchers, 32 people with first-hand experience of mental health, or family members. After an Open Call, they actively participated in all phases of the project, including writing microstories of their lived experiences, co-creating a chatbot, promoting it through press interviews and conferences, collectively interpreting the data collected and transforming them into 14 policy recommendations. The project focuses on the mental health social support networks, which are increasingly acknowledged as facilitators of the processes of recovery and improvement of quality of life, as a well as a preventive factor in situations of isolation and social exclusion. People with lived experience in mental health and their families claim their importance and effectiveness; nevertheless, scientific research on them is still relatively scarce. This immersive workshop will share with the participants the practices and learnings of CoAct for Mental Health Citizen Social Science project. It is co-facilitated and copresented by two Co-Researchers, people with first-hand experience of mental health and family members and one academic researcher, belonging to the team that promoted the project. Thanks to the hands-on approach of the workshop, the participants will adopt the role of the Co-Researchers and will also be able to envision the successes and the challenges of the project through a horizontal and bidirectional circular dialogue. The goal of this immersive session is to explain and to simulate part of the co-design process. Both non-digital (a research diary) and digital (a chatbot) tools were used. Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with the research diary and use it to write down personal experiences in the form of microstories. Participants will afterwards discover how the CoResearchers microstories were shared with the citizen scientists, in the form of a Telegram chatbot. This hands-on experience will serve as a basis to open-up the discussion. To motivate horizontal and active participation, an innovative format will be used, where the copresenters of the workshop and volunteers among the participants are alternatively asking and answering questions, in a 5-minute time windows. The practices, knowledge, and experiences of all actors of the project will be openly shared and commented, while evidencing that all people are knowledgeable.