Sharing lived experience: how personal is ‘personal’?

Practitioners sometimes share things about themselves with the people they work with; sometimes personal things, sometimes non-personal, everyday things. But which ones are which? How personal is ‘personal’?

The International Centre for Mental Health Social Research and Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust are undertaking research on sharing lived experience by mental health practitioners with service users. As part of that, we’d like to know how ‘personal’ different types of information are considered to be. So we are asking volunteers to complete a short questionnaire.

Several other studies have graded disclosures according to how personal the information being shared is. However, some research suggests views change over time, so it may be the case that people nowadays are more open about themselves, and see information about themselves as less personal than they would have done in the past. Since there are no studies that have rated disclosures according to how personal they are in the UK, in recent years, with the professionals that the current study is engaging with, it is necessary to construct a new scale.

If you want to take part, you’ll be asked to rate different things that a practitioner might share with a service user, according to how personal you think they are. If you are involved in social work or social care, whether in mental health services or otherwise, please consider taking part in this survey.

The survey takes approximately five minutes to complete and you could win a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

You can take part on-line by clicking here.

Further information about the study is available from the Chief Investigator, Jonny Lovell, by email: jl1155@york.ac.uk. Also, you can keep up to date with the study by visting Jonny’s blog.

Thank you!