Advisory Team

I work as the Head of Communications and Membership at the National Survivor User Network (NSUN), which is a network of grassroots user-led groups and individuals who have lived experience of mental ill-health, distress, or trauma. I am also a trustee for Self-injury Support. I’m interested in critical and political approaches to thinking about mental health, and the ways in which “suicide prevention” work might address the structures and systems that create or worsen distress. Find out more 

Chris Frederick is a lived experience advisor, and Principal Investigator for Project Soul Stride — a citizen-led initiative tackling the hidden crisis of Black suicidality in the UK. Through lived experience, research, and storytelling, Chris drives systemic change, focusing on suicide prevention, mental health inequalities, and loneliness. His work blends hope, humour, and hard truths to reimagine what’s possible for mental health advocacy and inclusive systems of care. Find out more

Courtney is Head of Policy & Campaigns at the National Survivor User Network (NSUN), a network of activists and grassroots groups working to redistribute power and resource in mental health. She is also co-founder and Executive Director at Make Space, a user-led group working toward more generous and nuanced understandings of self-harm. Their PhD, “Governing Sadness" used a mad and feminist lens to understand how “evidence” is understood in UK mental health policy. Find out more

Hel Spandler (they/she) is Professor of Mental Health Politics at the University of Lancashire and editor-in-chief of Asylum: the radical mental health magazine which is in its 40th-anniversary year. Hel is also one of the co-lead editors for the International Mad Studies Journal and held a Wellcome Investigator Award (2020-2024) for a research project about Madzines entitled ‘Crafting Contention: the role of Zines in challenging mental health knowledge and practice’.

Dr Ian Marsh is a Reader in the School of Allied and Public Health at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has worked in suicide prevention for 30 years, initially as a clinician in community mental health, then as an academic and researcher. Ian’s main teaching and research interests are in critical approaches to health and social care, particularly as they relate to suicide and suicide prevention. He is currently involved in research on online harms for UK Samaritans, and on suicide in public places for the railway industry, Highways England, and at coastal locations. 

Jennifer White is interested in examining the potential limits associated with the use of  expert-driven, one-size-fits-all, risk factor based approaches to youth suicide prevention. Critical, post-foundational approaches which question taken-for-granted assumptions and draw attention to complex relations of power,  can usefully inform research, practice and policy in youth suicide prevention. More expansive possibilities for facilitating youth suicide prevention conversations with young people  are  always possible, including those which are guided by the following values:  youth-driven, collaborative, appreciative and expansive, non-pathologizing and oriented to social justice and wellbeing. Find out more

I am the Lived Experience Lead for Continuous Quality Improvement at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and co-chair of our MAPLE Staff Network that provides a platform for staff members with lived experience of mental and physical long-term health conditions and/or disabilities to voice their opinions and share their experiences to support the Trust to improve working practices.

My passion and the purpose of my current role of Lived Experience Lead for Continuous Quality Improvement is to ensure that the lived experience voice, both service user and carer, is sought, heard, and acted on and embedded in the way we demonstrate improvement, embed learning, and measure performance. It is an honour and a privilege to be in a role that that uses my lived experience of mental illness, self-harm, attempted suicide and accessing mental health services to bring about positive change and reduce stigma.

I am also the co-chair of our Trust’s Council of Lived and Learnt Experience which brings together all our Trust’s lived experience patient, service user and carer engagement and reference groups together into one forum to share learning, feedback, to triangulate people’s experiences, reduce the gap between patient voice and Board.

I am a member of the Lincolnshire Suicide Prevention Strategic Group and helped Public Health officers to establish the Lincolnshire Suicide Prevention Lived Experience Forum, of which I am also a member.  As a former district and county councillor, I have experience of working in local government and influencing local policy development.

Ruairi White (he & they) is NSUN’s Interim CEO. He’s worked at NSUN since 2020 and has a particular interest in participatory funding practices, supporting sustainable practices of community care and organising, and developing anti-carceral approaches to mental health and safety. He lives in East London, and he likes to read, skate and find weird things in charity shops. Find out more 

Scott is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University. He has conducted a wide-range of theoretical and empirical research on suicide and suicide prevention with an emphasis on health sociology, program evaluation, and qualitative research methods. Find out more