OUR SERVICES
in2gr8 Peer Support Forum
What is the in2gr8 forum?
Our forum is aimed at trainee or qualified/registered mental health professionals, with lived experience of mental health difficulties. Lived experience of mental health difficulties includes those who have a diagnosis of a mental health difficulty and those who don’t, but all will have sought mental health support as necessary to their mental health. Support includes public or private mental health services, community or inpatient provision, support from a single therapist or from a team.
You are amongst those who may be in practice or resting from it, may be able to work or not work currently, be located in a Trust, in a local authority, in the third sector or in private practice. You may be moving between roles and posts. in2gr8mentalhealth has its strength in being there when crossing the boundaries of good times or difficult, but also that it is independent of workplace. The most important thing is, we are there to provide a space wherever you are in your journey, to stay connected with others in the mental health profession. This connection is essential to navigating and forming our identity when being both a provider of help and someone who has needed help.
If you would like to join the forum, please click on the button below and complete our joining form.
We wanted to let you know that as of 31st January 2023, the in2gr8mentalhealth forum is on a pause.
Our original forum provider suddenly changed from a free platform, to requesting a significant charge for its services, which our tiny unfunded organisation just cannot afford to pay - we will move the forum to another space.
The migration will take us a little time to get through, but we will be sure to be up and running as soon as possible in its shiny new home.
The forum is where we can be ourselves, connect with each other and offer and receive support – it is a vital part of our offerings and it will be back!
Joining the forum
When you request to join the in2gr8mentalhealth forum, you will complete a screening process and the details will remain confidential to in2gr8mentalhealth. The forum is private space and we recommend that our members register using a pseudonym. The full terms and conditions of using the forum can be found here, they must be read before engaging with the forum. They are also readily available within the forum itself.
Ethos
We are here in solidarity to be alongside each other, to help find a footing on what can be a tricky path navigating the mental health scene; tricky due to provider stigma, let alone mental health stigma. Support is important, and stigma can get in the way of asking for help if you need it. Stigma also stifles talking about the value of lived experience, how it might deepen practice and how it might have been formative in practice decisions (because of wanting to make things better or being inspired by how good things were for us). Stigma doesn’t help us share our “jewels from the caves of suffering“ (as written by David Gilbert in The Patient Revolution), the personal transformations or our flourishing; all this is counter-narrative to the stigma talk of incompetence, danger or weakness.
We should be able to integrate our lived experience of mental health difficulties into our conversations with supervisors, managers or teams without fear of censure. We should be able to hold up a mirror to what we claim to stand for, to those who come to us for help: promoting recovery, creating trauma-informed environments and practices and destigmatising and valuing lived experience from within our own professions and workplaces. in2gr8mentalhealth has always taken a systemic stance. We gather peers to create a supportive safe base for discovery and exploration, which may lead to energising further safe exploration by finding allies to tackle the pillars of the mental health scene (professional bodies, Trusts and professional training courses).
The in2gr8mentalhealth forum is currently run voluntarily. Our Directors are professionals who have lived experience of mental health difficulties themselves and want to continue to provide a safe base for members to come together and pay forward the hope of recovery and the value of lived experience.
If you would like to donate towards the costs of moderation and management of the forum, we would be most grateful; you can do so using the donate button below. Thank you.
