TELL ME A STORY

Personal insights from people with lived experience of self harm and suicide is invaluable for research and vital to improve health and social care services, says mental health researcher and clinician Professor Navneet Kapur.

Preventing suicide and self harm means transforming the care we offer; that transformation just isn’t possible without involving service users. Survivors and carers who have lived through those experiences ensure we ask the right questions and use the right designs. Those insights are particularly critical for training staff – they are often more real and compelling than theories from professors like me!”

Professor Kapur, Professor of Psychiatry and Population Health at the University of Manchester and honorary consultant psychiatrist with Mersey Care, has seen his work on inpatient suicide prevention dramatically reduce numbers in recent years.

“We used to put the emphasis on predicting those people most at risk,” he explains. “The reality is you can’t pick that one person who’s sadly going to go on to die by suicide or to self harm. Having better care for every single person who comes through the doors will improve the whole system and offer individual care. This research can help us make those improvements. Inpatient care is a particular safety success story although obviously there is still a lot to do.”

I Have A Lot To Offer

He wants data and care records to be more easily accessible by those caring for someone, so the person doesn’t endure the trauma of having to retell their story again and again. And he’s frank about his expectations of how the research is used.

“Research needs to lead to stuff happening in practice – with real impact – rather than disappear in dusty journals that nobody reads. That means designing the studies from the outset to improve patient care.”

• Professor Navneet Kapur has spent the last 25 years researching suicidal behaviour, particularly its causes, treatment and prevention and has led committees for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) including those developing guidelines for how all clinical staff should help people after self harm. He is a member of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group and helped shape the new Suicide Prevention Strategy for England.

As a long term service user, Michaela (left) is keen to offer her personal insights on mental health.

“I feel I have a lot to offer, I was in hospital for 12 years and my experiences were sometimes good, but not always.”

She’s a volunteer at the Kensington Vision community centre in Liverpool, which she describes as a lifesaver. “The people here are like my family. I love working in the café and being part of a community radio show.

“I’ve got the experience to help others. If I’d found the right support when I was 19, maybe I wouldn’t have gone through what I did. If I can make a difference to just one person’s life, then it would be absolutely worth it.”