Introduction
Sarah Carr PhD is Senior Fellow in Mental Health Policy at the University of Birmingham, UK. She has a particular interest in service user and survivor knowledge and research. She has personal experience of mental distress and mental health service use and uses this to inform all her work. Prior to taking up the post of Senior Fellow at Birmingham, Sarah was an Associate Professor of Mental Health Research at Middlesex University London. Before transferring to the academic sector she was a Senior Research Analyst at the Social Care Institute for Excellence, UK.
Expert
Sarah Carr PhD is Senior Fellow in Mental Health Policy at the University of Birmingham, UK. She has a particular interest in service user and survivor knowledge and research. She has personal experience of mental distress and mental health service use and uses this to inform all her work. Sarah originally studied Theology at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. Prior to taking up the post of Senior Fellow at Birmingham, Sarah was an Associate Professor of Mental Health Research at Middlesex University London. Before transferring to the academic sector she was a Senior Research Analyst at the Social Care Institute for Excellence where she led on a five-year UK Department of Health and Social Care commissioned health and social care personalisation policy implementation programme. She is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Disability and Society and The Lancet Psychiatry. She is a National Institute for Health Research, School for Social Care Research (NIHR SSCR) Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). She was formerly Chair of the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) for England and is an independent expert advisor for the Wellcome Trust Mental Health Programme.
Sarah was Principal Investigator for the first NIHR SSCR funded user-led study. The research explored mental health service user perspectives on targeted violence and abuse in the context of adult safeguarding in England and is Principal Investigator for an NIHR SSCR funded, user-controlled study on avoidable harm in adult mental health social care. In 2018 she co-edited a book entitled 'Social policy first hand: An international introduction to participative social welfare', published by Policy Press.
While at Middlesex University London she was Co-Director at The Centre for Co-production in Mental Health and was Chair of the Service User and Carer Reference Group for Think Ahead fast-track mental health social work scheme. She is currently the Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) lead for the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit and for the UKRI Loneliness, Social Isolation and Mental Health Network. She is a co-investigator on the ‘Open Dialogue: Development and Evaluation of a Social Network Intervention for Severe Mental IIlness (ODDESSI)’ study, the first trial of Open Dialogue in the NHS in England and a member of the Expert Advisers Panel for the NICE Centre for Guidelines.
Fields of expertise: Disability, Health and wellbeing, Inclusive social development / inclusive societies / social inclusion, Social innovation / public sector innovation / policy innovation, Social policy