Experiental knowledge and expertise are playing an increasing role in Dutch mental health care (the ggz). However, different parties (inside and outside the mental health sector) question the added value and importance of experience experts. After all, what exactly is experiental knowledge? This project tries to answer that question.
The project is a collaboration with the Verhalenbank Psychiatrie (Story Bank Psychiatry), based at the Department of Psychiatry of the UMC Utrecht. The Verhalenbank Psychiatrie collects the personal experiences of and about people with mental vulnerability. Its purpose is largely twofold. On the one hand, it gives care recipients, care givers and surrounding people a voice that can offer recovery, comfort and inspiration. On the other hand, these stories are also utilised as scientific information. The funding for this project was awarded to Prof. Floortje Scheepers (UMC Utrecht), and consists of two 3-year postdoc projects.
The first postdoc project is practised at this faculty, by dr. Roy Dings (FFTR, Radboud University). Drawing on philosophical insights on epistemology, phenomenology and philosophy of science, among others, a conceptual framework will be realised on what experiental knowledge 'in theory' can encompass.
The second postdoc project will be conducted at the UMC Utrecht, by dr. Linde van Schuppen. She is a philosophy alumna at the RU, and obtained her PhD from the RU Faculty of Arts earlier this year. Linde will use the conceptual framework from the first project as a basis for empirical research. She will analyse the stories in the Verhalenbank Psychiatrie by looking for which different forms of knowledge (from the conceptual framework) are implicitly used by different parties in the mental health sector.
The aim is that the conceptual framework, enriched and adapted with the empirical insights, can be developed into a new model of experiental knowledge. This model could then serve as a foundation for underpinning the use of experts by experience in the mental health sector. There is also already cooperation with several mental health institutions to implement the outcomes of the research into practice.