World Mental Health Day: Lived experience at the centre of care
World Mental Health Day (10 October) focuses this year on "Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change."
The theme highlights the importance of listening to people with lived experience of mental health challenges - recognising their insight as essential in shaping better, safer and more compassionate services.
Involving people with lived experience
At NHFT, co-production is central to how we design and deliver care. Working in partnership with people who use our services, listening to their lived experience helps us build services that are more responsive and effective.
Recently, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) and Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT), came together as an NHS group to jointly develop shared foundations for lived experience co-production across two counties. You can read more about this here. Embedding patient voices in how we develop and deliver our services is extremely important. People with lived experience provide an insight that professionals alone cannot offer and this helps us improve the quality of the care we provide.
You can find some recent examples of our co-production work below:
- Co-production shaping better care on our inpatient wards
- How young people helped shape the Year 11 health screening questionnaire
- Co-producing dementia friendly confusion beds at Spinneyfields
Peer support: lived experience making a difference
Our peer support workers play a vital role across adult mental health services. They are people with personal experience of a mental health condition who are trained to support others by sharing what helped them, offering understanding and providing hope. We also have carer peer support workers who can help those caring for someone with a mental illness.
Peer support can make a meaningful difference. When someone uses their own lived experience to walk alongside another person, it can help them feel less alone, more understood and more confident in their own recovery journey. You can find out more here.
How we support mental health in our secure settings
As we recognise and raise awareness of World Mental Health day, we want to talk about the important work that takes place within some of our secure settings - areas where lived experience and hope are just as central to recovery.
NHFT provides healthcare in 14 prisons and secured settings, providing mental health support to residents, with the aim of helping individuals to be able to recognise and manage their feelings and emotions.
Watch this video to find out more:
Recently NHFT took over the care of patients in medium and low secure forensic settings, in addition to some existing low secure settings already at the Trust. Patients in these settings may have a history of offending, or behaviour considered too high risk to be placed in an open setting.
Patients can remain in low or medium secure settings for long periods, as they receive medical, psychological and structured therapeutic support. In these settings, hope and working with those with lived experience plays an important part in how patients progress with their recovery, and they are encouraged to participate in activities such as gardening, art, music and creative activities, encouraging independence and hope for the future.
Where to find mental health support
It can be difficult to know where to go to get mental health support when you think you might need it. We have several different services that are here to help.
24/7 Mental Health Number
This is a 24-hour telephone helpline service available to anyone in Northamptonshire any time, any day. The Mental Health Number connects callers to trained professionals, who can provide local support, advice or signposting.
Mental Health Text Number
This service provides the same support available on the Mental Health Number, but by text message. This means that those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or find talking on the phone difficult, can access the same 24:7 support
Crisis cafes
These cafes are run by a mental health expert and a mind support worker. They offer support and safety to anyone in need. We offer tools to cope and approaches to help. As well as offering support, professionals can also refer and guide you to further services if needed.
NHS Northamptonshire Talking Therapies
If you are feeling low in mood, stressed or anxious, we will work with you to get you back on track. Our Talking Therapies support options includes our online tools, which you can use whenever and wherever works best for you.
Support for Carers
Caring for someone with a mental health illness can be challenging. There are a range of support options for carers on the NHFT website including Recovery College courses where individuals may meet others going through similar experiences.
Support for children and young people
Northamptonshire Drop-ins
Our drop-in sessions are for young people aged 8 to 25 years old and their parents and carers (if they wish to come along) at locations across the county. The sessions are with professional mental health workers who can offer you a safe space to talk and be listened to.
Children's and young peoples mental health services - Live Chat
This is an online chat service (open Monday to Friday, 9am-7pm) for young people aged 13+ and their parents or carers. A friendly team offers advice, information and help finding the right support.
Look after your mental health
Visit our help page if you are someone you care for needs help now.
Thank you to all our staff, volunteers, carers and lived experience advisors - your support makes a difference every day.