Why lived experience matters

Director of Consumer Lived/Living Experience at AMAH Rebecca Langman said lived experience practitioners draw upon their own personal experiences of living with mental health challenges to bring a consumer perspective to a healthcare team or system.  

“Something that really defines lived experience work is the ability to share your lived experience safely and for influence,” said Rebecca.  

“Doing so can help inform what is most useful for the consumer and their family, as well as what will help the clinical team to understand the situation more. Doing that safely with a lot of self reflection is a real skill.”  

Lived experience work happens across a broad range of contexts in the mental health system.  

“The work can involve being on the floor as a peer worker, providing care directly to carers and consumers, or working in a strategic policy position, like me.” said Rebecca.  

Director of Carer Lived/Living Experience at AMAH Violeta Peterson said there's been a concerted effort to partner with lived experience and develop organisational capacity and capability to support and enable the lived and living experience workforce to thrive. 

"Today's symposium highlighted the commitment to ensuring Lived Expertise is not only represented at all levels of the service, but that there is a collective understanding about what it means to share power," said Violeta. 

 "By co-designing new opportunities for involvement in service delivery, seeking opportunities to showcase work and advocate for lived experience involvement across our services, what began as a challenging process of change has become a real testament to what’s possible." 

A range of speakers and group activities were available for participants to take part in, including a peer cadet panel discussion, a storytelling circle, a creative co-design table with crafts and a fish-bowl discussion on Lived Experience and Open Dialogue.  

Keynote speaker Dr Louise Byrne said it was notable that the Symposium “celebrated lived experience in a lived experience way.”  

“The big thing that lived experience has to teach other professions is that we can't ever just come to work with a professional hat on, we have to come with our whole souls and heart,” she said.  

"And if we don't, then we're doing a disservice to the person we’re interacting with that day.”