The need for lived experience in psychology education

Dr Hannah Zimmerman’s Doctor of Clinical Psychology thesis explored student perspectives of lived experience involvement in clinical psychology training. Students were asked to complete two fictional stories about such involvement, and the social understandings underlying student perspectives in the stories were explored.

Dr Zimmerman’s research showed that clinical psychology students valued lived experience knowledge, and positioned biomedical, psychological knowledge as more valuable than lived experience knowledge. Students also wrote about the two knowledge systems as incompatible and mutually exclusive. However, Dr Zimmerman argues that lived experience knowledge is critical within psychology for many reasons.

“From a human rights and social justice perspective, it’s imperative we don’t develop and deliver systems that exclude the perspectives and expertise of the people these systems most directly effect. There is a mantra that summarises this nicely: nothing about us, without us.”

The involvement of ‘experts by experience’, a term that refers to people who have lived/living experience of mental distress, is currently minimal in clinical psychology training.

“I explored psychology students’ perspectives of experts by experience, using a story completion method. I recruited clinical psychology students from across Aotearoa and asked them to complete fictional stories about experts by experience, after providing the opening lines of the story. I explored the assumptions, ideas and language used across participants’ stories as a way to understand what views exist of expert by experience involvement in psychology education.”

It’s important to include lived experience knowledge as it aligns with mental health policy in Aotearoa and internationally, and there is a lot of research which highlights the benefits of lived experience involvement in mental health education.

“Expert by experience involvement can lead students to gain knowledge about the experience of distress, challenge stigma, develop empathy and interpersonal skills, and improve reflection.”

Her findings demonstrate that expert by experience involvement in psychology education should be included alongside a wider commitment to address the power structures and dominant views in psychology which can undermine lived experience knowledge.

“There needs to be a committed effort in psychology to shift these power dynamics and embed lived experience in all levels of psychology education. These changes can only be made effectively in partnership with experts by experience, and through these experts being in leadership roles.”

A lecture Dr Zimmerman took at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University in 2020, taught by lived experience academic Associate Professor Sarah Gordon, inspired her to research this topic.

“During that lecture I reflected on how little of my psychology education up until that point was informed by lived experience perspectives, and was curious about why this could be, and how we could increase lived experience involvement.”

Completing her thesis research while also training as a clinical psychologist raised unanticipated emotional and personal difficulties for Dr Zimmerman.

“I had to engage with a lot of critical research about my discipline and question a lot of the assumptions I had learned from my education so far. Learning how to reconcile and sit with the tensions that came up was a huge part of my doctoral journey, and I think it has improved my work as a psychologist.”

Dr Zimmerman currently works as a clinical psychologist at the Massey Psychology Clinic based on the Manawatū campus where she applies her research to her practice.