Understanding the Impacts of Online Mental Health Peer Support Forums: Realist Synthesis.

Background: Online forums are widely used for mental health peer support. However, evidence of their safety and effectiveness is mixed. Further research focused on articulating the contexts in which positive and negative impacts emerge from forum use is required to inform innovations in implementation.

Designing a Library of Lived Experience for Mental Health: integrated realist synthesis and experience-based co-design study in UK mental health services.

Objective: Living Library events involve people being trained as living 'Books', who then discuss aspects of their personal experiences in direct conversation with attendees, referred to as 'Readers'. This study sought to generate a realist programme theory and a theory-informed implementation guide for a Library of Lived Experience for Mental Health (LoLEM).

Design: Integrated realist synthesis and experience-based co-design.

Improving Peer Online Forums (iPOF): protocol for a realist evaluation of peer online mental health forums to inform practice and policy.

Introduction: Peer online mental health forums are commonly used and offer accessible support. Positive and negative impacts have been reported by forum members and moderators, but it is unclear why these impacts occur, for whom and in which forums. This multiple method realist study explores underlying mechanisms to understand how forums work for different people.

Designing a library of lived experience for mental health (LoLEM): protocol for integrating a realist synthesis and experience based codesign approach.

Introduction: People with lived expertise in managing mental health challenges can be an important source of knowledge and support for other people facing similar challenges, and for carers to learn how best to help. However, opportunities for sharing lived expertise are limited. Living libraries support people with lived expertise to be 'living books', sharing their experiences in dialogue with 'readers' who can ask questions.