Overview
Citizen Science approaches are widely used to generate new knowledge, but are only just starting to be applied in mental health. In collaboration with the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, we are continuing to explore their use in mental health research. We described the transformative potential for mental health of citizen science in a thought piece published in Lancet Psychiatry. We contributed to a Wellcome-funded report on citizen mental health science here.
Some of our work has taken place as part of the UKRI-funded C-STACS study. This includes our first citizen science project, which investigated the self-management strategies used by people living with mental health problems. You can read the findings of this project here. We have also co-produced a preliminary model for how citizen science can create change here which we will continue to refine. We published a systematic review developing best practice guidelines for using citizen science in mental health here, as defined in a prospectively-registered protocol here. A summary of our review findings has been published in a blog by The Mental Elf here.
Through work with the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, we developed strategies for recruiting member of the public to mental health research studies here. We identified data integrity issues common to mental health research with public participants here. We reflected on the ethical and legal challenges of public evaluations of digital mental health interventions here. We considered the use of service use feedback databases as a largescale source of information about health experiences here.
Public and policy engagement
We have presented about mental health citizen science at conferences, including giving talks (ENMESH 2022, C*Sci 2023, IMH Research Day 2023 and 2024, Refocus on Recovery 2023, ) and organising a multi-study symposium at ENMESH 2024. We have engaged diverse communities in person (e.g. Redeemed Christian Church of God, 14 May 2023; virtual public event 1 February 2024) and online (e.g. a blog by Care Opinion here).
We contributed to a UK government roundtable discussion on citizen science and policymaking here, and to discussion papers by UKRI and the Institute for Community Studies on experiences of citizen science here and ethics in citizen science here.
Contact
You can email us by at mhcitizenscience@nottingham.ac.uk. If you are interested in project results and future citizen science projects, please join our mailing list: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MHCITIZENSCIENCEPROJECT&A=1 . Please add MHCITIZENSCIENCEPROJECT@JISCMAIL.AC.UK to your safe list.