Public and Patient Involvement (PPI)
What is PPI?
Public and Patient Involvement, or PPI, is about doing research with members of the public or people with lived experience rather than researching about them. It’s about working in collaboration or partnership with people with lived experience, with carers, with service users or with the public in all phases of a research project: planning, designing, managing, conducting, and translating and disseminating findings. It’s an ethos as well as a practice, recognising the necessity and value of ensuring that the voices of those for whom the research matters are meaningfully included.
PSI-STAR PPI
Vision
PSI-STAR’s overall vision is to improve our collective understanding of the onset, nature, care/treatment of, and recovery from psychosis. The PSI-STAR team recognises that knowledge through lived experience of psychosis, treatment and recovery is a valid and relatively unexplored source of knowledge that is absent from most mental health research. At PSI-STAR, we are committed to proactively including a wide range of diverse voices and opinions around the distressing phenomenon of psychosis.
In this context the vision for PPI involvement is that the PSI-STAR’s network will become a genuinely collaborative partnership between people with lived experience of psychosis, family members, students, clinicians, researchers and organisations with an interest in mental health, psychosis and recovery.
The aim and objectives of PPI involvement
The overall aim of PPI involvement is to integrate the voice of lived experience into every part of the PSI-STAR programme.
The objectives are to:
• promote and advocate for lived experience of psychosis as a valid form of knowledge within all PSI STAR projects and network activities.
• contribute to the emergence of a new and more hopeful way of understanding and treating psychosis through a genuine democratisation of knowledge production.
• create a safe and nurturing space that will enable people to dialogue with each other and allow new insights to emerge.
• provide ongoing training to the PSI Star network around good practice in PPI involvement.
• evaluate the experience and impact of the PPI dimension of the program.
PSI-STAR is supported by the PPI Ignite Network, which promotes excellence and inspires innovation in public and patient involvement (PPI) in health and social care research in Ireland. RCSI, UCD, NUIG, TCD and UCC are all members of the PPI Ignite network.
PSI-STAR is supported by a number of PPI organisational partners. They include:
Shine, a national organisation providing information and support for people affected by mental health difficulties.
Grow Mental Health, a charity that provides free, friendly community based, peer support groups for anyone who is experiencing a mental health issue
Peer Advocacy in Mental Health (formerly Irish Advocacy Network), an island-wide, independent, mental health organisation led by people with personal experience of mental health challenges.
Spunout, Ireland’s youth information website created by young people, for young people
Mental Health Engagement and Recovery, part of the Health Service Executive (HSE) that seeks to ensure that the voice of the service user, family member and carer inform the design delivery and evaluation of services
Mental Health Reform, Ireland’s leading national coalition on mental health, involving 77 member organisations working together to drive progressive reform of mental health services and supports in Ireland
Mental Health Commission Ireland, whose remit is to promote, encourage and foster high standards and good practices in the delivery of mental health services in Ireland
IADT Institute of Art, Design and Technology, a leader in higher education with a specialist focus on the development of future makers, shapers, technologists, thinkers, storytellers and creators who lead and innovate in a changing digital world. PSI-STAR will work with the Animation department in IADT.
Orygen Youth Health Research Centre. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Orygen Youth Health is a world-leading youth mental health research centre with collaborative partnerships that span Australia and the globe
