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The purpose of this paper is to explore student experiences of learning from mental health service users and carers.

In total, 30 clinical psychology trainees and ex-trainees took part in an online survey (n=21) or focus group (n=9). Responses were analysed using interpretative thematic analysis.

A number of themes were identified. There were two pre-conditions of learning: valuing the teaching and emotional arousal. Participants’ learning experiences were characterised by cognitive and meta-cognitive processes: active learning, reflection, increased attention and vivid memories. Furthermore, participants might have a meta-cognitive experience of having learned something, but being unsure what that something was. Participants reported learning about the lives of service users, about themselves and about the wider societal context for people with mental health difficulties.

In order to facilitate learning students should value the input of service users. This allows them to contain and use the emotional arousal the teaching produces. Furthermore, leaving students with a feeling that something has been learned but not being exactly sure what that has been may facilitate students seeking out further opportunities for service user involvement.

Few studies have explored the process of learning from mental health service users and carers. In the current study, the emotion aroused in participants was primary. Furthermore, a new meta-cognitive experience, namely, the experience of having learned something, but not being sure what has been learned, has been identified.

The purpose of this paper is to explore service users’ experiences of a mindfulness group intervention.

In total, 15 participants with a diagnosis of a mild or moderate intellectual disability and concurrent mental health difficulties were interviewed using semi-structured interviews about their experiences of attending the mindfulness group.

Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. The three super ordinate themes that emerged were positive aspects of mindfulness, positive aspects of attending the group and negative aspects of attending the group. There were seven subthemes. The results highlighted that participants found the mindfulness group to be beneficial, partly due to specific aspects of the mindfulness intervention and partly due to the group process. The negative aspects of the group were harder to elicit, and were less specifically related to mindfulness.

Mindfulness-based interventions have emerged as a promising approach for individuals with intellectual disabilities with mental health difficulties. There is currently a lack of research exploring service users with intellectual disabilities about their experiences of mindfulness interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore mental health service users’ experiences of involvement in a clinical psychology course.

Five participants were recruited from a service user and carer group aligned to a university professional clinical psychology course. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and data were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Four superordinate themes, group processes, advocating, transforming and power, were drawn from the data, with ten subthemes emerging capturing experiences on the personal, professional and group levels.

The study is not generalisable and has a small number of participants. However, many of the themes have resonance with existing literature.

Service user initiatives need to consider the personal and contextual issues that service users may have experienced prior to their involvement. The needs of service user initiatives may change over time. Such initiatives must evolve in conjunction with the personal and political journeys of participants.

Few studies have explored the experiences of mental health service users in clinical psychology training using a robust methodology. The current study suggests that eliciting these experiences highlights factors that facilitate involvement as well as the barriers.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals experience higher rates of mental health difficulties in comparison to their heterosexual counterparts (Meyer, 2003; Plöderl and Tremblay, 2015). This is in part due to the experience of homophobia and stigmatisation within society. This discrimination has also been perpetuated within the mental health field, where LGB individual’s sexuality has been pathologised. In response to this historical stigmatisation a number of policies have been created to develop ethical practice while working with this minority group (APA, 2012; BPS, 2019; HSE, 2009; PSI, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to capture the experience of LGB individuals within mental health services and examine if these guidelines are being adhered to.

This study is a meta-narrative synthesis of 13 empirical papers, published between 1999 and 2019.

This study has found both negative and positive experiences of service users. The paper discusses major themes, implications for practice and directions for future research.

This is the first systematic review to look at the experiences of clients who have attended mental health services.

Charlotte Brontë integrated her own and her sisters' traumatic boarding school experiences into her novel, Jane Eyre (1847) as a way of expressing her anger through autobiographical fiction. The aim is to link contemporary research into boarding school trauma to the relevant events, thereby identifying what she wrote as a testimony contributing to the long history of the problematic nature of boarding schools.

Autobiographical fiction is discussed as a form of testimony, placing Jane Eyre in that category. Recent research into the traumatic experiences of those whose parents chose to send them to boarding school is presented, leading to an argument that educational historians need to analyse experience rather than limiting their work to structure and planning. The traumatic events the Brontë sisters experienced at the Clergy Daughters' School are outlined as the basis for what is included in Jane Eyre at the fictional Lowood School. Specific traumatic events in the novel are then identified and contemporary research into boarding school trauma applied.

The findings reveal Charlotte's remarkable insight into the psychological impact on children being sent away to board at a time when understandings about trauma and boarding school trauma did not exist. An outcome of the analysis is that it places the novel within the field of the history of education as a testimony of boarding school life.

This is the first application of boarding school trauma research to the novel.

Purpose – This chapter contributes to the development of informed learning pedagogy by examining its innately political character. Through examining issues of power that arise in a particular educational setting, the aim is to illuminate how power (and resistance to it) needs to be carefully considered by practitioners who engage with informed learning pedagogy.

Theoretical Approach – Foucault’s view of power, defining it as something that can be both generative and repressive, and which works only in combination with resistance to this power, is specifically drawn on to illuminate how dialogues between students give rise to changed information practices.

Design – Twenty groups of learners, each of five to seven students, engaged in a series of three complex informed learning activities, and generated extensive datasets as they recorded their dialogues to online discussion boards within the Blackboard course management system used on a postgraduate course in educational technology. These data were supplemented by interviews with a number of students and the course tutor.

Findings – The information practices of the groups developed in different ways depending on a number of factors consistent with informed learning. Students were motivated by achieving high grades, and data reveal that students respond to surveillance from teaching staff and each other by communicating outside of the official discussion board space. This is illuminating because by resisting power in this way students develop new practices that are specifically relevant to their group, and shows how dominant power and resistance to it help develop facets of informed learning.