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This paper aims to present a thematic analysis of student nurses’ experiences of an innovative collaboration between a mental health Recovery College and a nursing faculty, where Recovery College trainers’ expertise in co-production and peer facilitation were foregrounded. The aim of this study is to understand how nursing students experienced being peer facilitators of well-being workshops for fellow students following training with Recovery College trainers.

Thematic analysis of qualitative data from eight semi-structured interviews and a focus group with 15 participants.

The overarching theme that emerged was “The process of being a student Peer Facilitator”. Six themes emerged from the data: “What we brought”; “Conceptualisation”; “Adaptation”; “we’re giving them the tools”; “What we gained”; and “Development”.

Mental health nurse educators could forge collaborative relationships with Recovery College colleagues with a broader remit than service users’ “lived experience” of mental distress. Student nurses should be given opportunities to be peer facilitators and draw on their lived experience as student nurses as means of addressing their and their peers’ mental health.

Original findings were that the student experience of being a peer facilitator was different to their other experiences in education and clinical practice. They drew on their lived experience throughout and found that they learned skills to address their well-being through supporting other students to improve theirs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore occupational health (OH) clinicians’ perspectives on employee mental health in the mental health workplace in the English National Health Service.

Thematic analysis of data from seven semi-structured interviews is performed in this paper.

Three themes emerged under the core theme of “Situating OH services”: “the Uniqueness of the mental health service setting”, “the Limitations of OH services” and “the Meaning of mental health at work”. An important finding came from the first theme that management referrals in mental health may be due to disputes about workers’ fitness to face violence and aggression, a common feature of their working environment.

This was a small scale study of a previously unresearched population.

These findings should be used to refine and standardise OH provision for mental healthcare workers, with a particular focus on exposure to violence and workers’ potential “lived experience” of mental illness as features of the mental health care workplace.

This is the first study to explore OH clinicians’ perspectives on the mental health service working environment.