Mr. Michael Ryan:

I apologise for the anachronisms. I thought I had minimised those but the Deputy is highlighting the need for all of us to be aware of language and how important it is that it is as accessible as possible. When the Bill is finalised it would be important that it is in language that is accessible to those it affects most.

The phrase the Deputy mentioned refers to people who have had their own lived mental health experiences and would now be in recovery. In our traditional model of healthcare we would go to the doctor and expect him or her to fix us if we had a broken toe. Our role is then to do whatever he or she says to do, be it to rest or whatever else. In a mental health setting the people who have to recover are experts in their own lives and they know what recovery means and what they want to achieve. These people will have lived with a mental health challenge 24-7, possibly for years, so they will understand it a lot better than anyone else. That also applies to their family members or supporters. They will be able to recognise what is going well for someone, what triggers them and what helped them. There is that expertise of living with a mental health challenge that only a person who is going through it has. We would call that person an expert by experience and we would say from an organisational point of view that this expertise of lived experience can be used in a service improvement function.

The Deputy just gave an example of language, accessibility, time of appointments and simple things like that which work for people. There is also a therapeutic value for the person and for others. That is why we have concepts like recovery education, which are led by people with lived experience to say that they had condition X, this is their understanding of it and this is what they did to help. Other people who are going through a similar experience find that beneficial. We have also moved to integrate that experience into the HSE more systematically by developing the role of peer support workers, who are people with their own lived experience who are now in recovery and are part of multidisciplinary teams. The Bill needs to ensure that it recognises the value of experts by experience and they must be incorporated into it.