About the research
There are numerous calls for valuing and incorporating the lived experience of (former) patients into how psychiatry conceptualizes, studies, and treats mental disorders. However, the concept on which such expertise-by-experience hinges, i.e., “experiential knowledge,” lacks a solid theoretical foundation. In this project, we explore whether conceptual tools provided by the complexity approach to mental disorders could help form a theoretical foundation for experiential knowledge, and if so, how this might benefit the practice of expertise-by-experience. This project will combine philosophical and empirical research by supplementing conceptual analysis with a focus group of experts-by-experience and complexity scientists.
