Social workers with lived experience of mental health concerns: perspectives of U.S. social work education leaders

ABSTRACT

Professionals with lived experience (LE) of mental distress might better understand service users, educate colleagues, and serve as role models. This exploratory quantitative study asked U.S. social work education leaders if they perceive positives and negatives of professionals having LE; what advice they would offer students with LE; and analyzed whether certain experiences influenced responses. Having LE and/or close relationships with people with LE was associated with perceiving positives, which was associated with advising students about using LE to help others. Perceiving negatives was associated with advising about difficulties. Implications are offered for preparing professionals to use LE in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-oppressive practice
• mental distress
• mental illness discrimination
• professionals with lived experience
• sanism
• social work education
• stigma
• students with disabilities
• students with mental health concerns

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15332985.2024.2334273