in2gr8mentalhealth C.IC. Is Closing

It is with great sadness that we announce the closing in October 2025 of in2gr8mentalhealth CIC, a peer organisation valuing, destigmatising and supporting mental health professionals who experience mental health difficulties, run by those who have been through it. We offered individual and a group PeerSpace mentoring programme and training into organisations and academic mental health courses on this issue. The closure is happening because in2gr8mentalhealth was unable to continue to sustain itself voluntarily, then in the last year, on minimum wage, after 8 years of denied funding. Various funders and professional bodies were approached during this time to help but to no avail; reasons included not seeing mental health staff as being in need enough for their financial support, and latterly, increasingly taking the work ‘in-house’ in various organisations; both of these are problematic as we explain below.  

Our ground-up experience and emergent research since we have been in operation show that mental health staff experience a variety of difficult mental health experiences, at a full range of severity, and continue to experience professional stigma and difficulties harnessing the value of lived experience (Tay et al., 2020; Curry et al., 2025). We know from mentee feedback that working with peers who have gone through this too here at in2gr8mentalhealth, in a space away from their workplace, feels safer than where they are employed and has helped them feel understood and inspired by others who have found a way to walk this path, a path borne out by further research (Tay et al, 2018) to be trodden by many of us, and not the minoritised and isolating experience it has been made out to feel. 

We have thought long and hard about the reasons why mental health professionals experience such stigma, as an active part of our work, and discussed these in conversation with one another. Central to the psychologically informed trainings we have offered to organisations, as well as validating this with our mentees, is our understanding of the split in systems which has required the same human being to be either staff or service user, as if never the twain shall or could meet. The shadow difficulties that can plague all people, including those who also have the job title of mental health professional, have been unwanted by the mental health professions and have rather been dismissed, ignored or denied, leaving the professions at risk of projecting those shadows into the ‘other side of the split’ which is into the client community. This results in the isolation, non-support and stigma against those in the profession who have mental health difficulties. Supporting and integrating our own full range of experiences, would in turn lead to a more robust workforce and the generation of compassionate and helpful workforce planning and support policies. In tandem, there has been little application of the tenets of the Recovery Model (Anthony, 1993), apparently so vaunted by the mental health professions, to mental health staff experience. This has led to impatience and inflexibility in systems, enactment of barriers in policy and aggressions in interpersonal encounters; Bell’s Four I’s of Oppression (2013) is a useful reference here to help see how Ideological oppression (beliefs and attitudes), Institutional oppression (laws, policies, and systems), Interpersonal oppression (discriminatory actions between individuals), and Internalized oppression (when oppressed groups internalize negative messages about themselves) overlap and become interdependent aspects of systemic injustice. 

in2gr8mentalhealth was always meant to be more than the voice of just once person which was why an organisation was born. This was because what was needed was  intervention through various interlocking levels of the system which required the supportive weight of an organisation to help spread influence. This meant we sat at a table on the shoulders of many in a CIC, offering allyship and solidarity so necessary in any activist work. We will feel the closure of this organisation acutely, it represented much to so many, and its building and running was tied to our heartstrings. This was heart work.  

The world in 2025 is in renewed depths of pain and turmoil, spaces and resources for supporting all peoples who were already marginalised and oppressed is urgently critical. It is in these waters that we have found ourselves sinking. It is no surprise to us that funding became our critical issue, it is not money that failed us, but the ideologies that drive its scarcity to those in need, whilst those in power sit on their mountains of gold to keep them ‘safe’ there. We represent only vulnerability to the mental health scene and not much more, not only because it struggles so hard to see the value of lived experience in its mental health workforce, which undermines its very commitment to co-production to better develop provision, but also because it is so stripped of resources in our society that it is often unable to even think – for that we have compassion. We are all beneficiaries of huge systems of inequitable power leading to social injustices which can feel entrenched and very hard to change if we forget the power of community. 

in2gr8mentalhealth was begun in 2017 by Founder Dr Natalie Kemp who, after her own mental health difficulties and breakdown, rose through her recovery by making a rudimentary website with private forum and reached out as peer to connect with and support other mental health professionals who also had lived/living experience of mental health difficulties; it was very much a part of Natalie’s recovery to do this and vital to standing against discrimination, stigma and sanism in the mental health scene. It was to pierce the delusion that having mental health difficulties meant that a person was incompetent and had nothing to offer in mental health work, rather than supporting people’s capacity changes during times of need. Natalie spoke at several British Psychological Society (BPS) conferences on the stigma within the Clinical Psychology profession as Expert by Experience and professional – at the time this wasn’t being made so visible. Natalie  worked with the BPS and UCL Unit for Stigma Research (UCLUS) as lead author to develop the BPS Guidance “Supporting and Valuing Lived Experience of Mental Health Difficulties in Clinical Psychology Training” (Kemp et al., 2020) and collaborate on the Division of Clinical Psychology “Statement on Clinical Psychologists with lived experience of mental health difficulties” (British Psychological Society, 2020). This sparked conversations with fellow professionals and organisations in New Zealand and Australia who wanted to do something similar. 

In 2020 Natalie was joined by fellow Director Dr Anna Sicilia, a peer in the lived experience world, and the PeerSpace and individual mentoring and training offerings to clinical psychology and undergraduate psychology programmes were established. During covid, in2gr8mentalhealth spent time recording conversations with other mental health professionals in their “in conversation with” series, so that people could see that this could be spoken about and that they weren’t alone. in2gr8mentalhealth became a C.I.C. and Dr Helen Taylor joined the team after being a mentee herself and helped invaluably to expand the offerings, including developing training placements for trainee clinical psychologists who had their own mental health difficulties and were interested in this peer community work.   

In2gr8mentalhealth came to symbolise a home or anchor point where people would be met with understanding by their peers and given time to have their experiences of need, prejudice and discrimination heard, people have walked into professional interviews holding onto information from us to battle stigma and raise confidence. People's experiences always came of course with other intersectional challenges in both this society at large and in the professions specifically, e.g. running the gauntlet of widening access steps within a Clinical Psychology profession, that was inexperienced from its historical structural inequity and attendant blindness as to how to support this. 

We can only hope that despite knowing that people are still suffering, have less access to peer support, and find it less safe to speak about these aspects within their own employing organisations, that somehow everything we have worked so hard to model and stand for over the past eight years won’t be lost, but will be amplified by those we’ve trained and supported. We also know there are people out there who we haven't met who continue to help light the way.  

We are sorry from the bottom of our hearts that it became so impossible to continue. We remain steadfast, experienced and knowing on these issues, and ready as ever to employ them and challenge stigma in every context where we are. So if you see us, please say hello and know we’ve still got your back.  

Mentoring, Training and Data Retention 

All final mentoring meetings and trainings are being honoured as we wind down to a finish at the end of October 2025. Our last group PeerSpace will be on 30^th September 2025 from 6pm to 7.30pm please email: contact@in2gr8mentalhealth.com for joining details or any further queries. 

All business records and any anonymised mentoring notes will be retained for 6 years in an encrypted, password protected folder on the advice of the ICO and our insurers. If you would like us to delete any records, please let us know via email: contact@in2gr8mentalhealth.com 

In solidarity and support, 

Dr Natalie Kemp and Dr Helen Taylor 

References: 

Anthony, W. A. (1993). Recovery from mental illness: the guiding vision of the mental health service system in the 1990s. Psychosocial rehabilitation journal, 16(4), 11. 

Bell, J. (2013). The four “I’s” of oppression. Somerville, NJ: YouthBuild USA. 

British Psychological Society. (2020). Statement on Clinical Psychologists with lived experience of mental health difficulties. https://cms.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-07/Statement%20on%20clinical%20psychologists%20with%20lived%20experience%20of%20mental%20health%20difficulties.pdf 

Curry, E., Kemp, N., Nicholson, J. (2025). A Systematic Literature Review of Formally Trained Prosumers’ Experiences. [Doctoral dissertation. University of Hertfordshire].

Kemp, N., Scior, K., Clements, H., & Mackenzie-White, K. (2020, September). BPS/DCP Guidance: Supporting and valuing lived experience of mental health difficulties in clinical psychology training. British Psychological Society. 

Tay, S., Alcock, K., & Scior, K. (2018). Mental health problems among clinical psychologists: Stigma and its impact on disclosure and help‐seeking. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(9), 1545-1555.