Dr Brett Scholz is a Senior Research Fellow in the ANU Medical School. More than 40 of his 66 publications are coproduced with or led by consumers or people with lived experience of the phenomenon of investigation. As a critical health psychologist, his research often focuses on ways health and health services can challenge power norms, be more equitable, and by led by consumers. He has held positions in a wide range of health disciplines and areas – using them all to champion coproduction with consumers – including a term as Board Member of the ACT Mental Health Consumer Network elected by consumer members of the network, Chief Research Officer at spurprojects, research positions in centres for Nursing & Midwifery, Psychiatry, Public Health, and Psychology. He is currently an Executive Committee member of the International Society of Critical Health Psychology, Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Adelaide Medical School at the University of Adelaide and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at the University of Canberra.

Along with other health and science disciplines, psychology has traditionally privileged (and continues to privilege) its own ways of understanding the world through an often ostensibly objective lens. In such a paradigm, other forms of meaning making can be ignored or otherwise marginalised – including experiential expertise. Given that mental health and human/social activities more broadly are the foci of psychology services, research, and teaching, it is then both problematic and a lost opportunity that our services, knowledge production, and knowledge dissemination are not meaningfully coproduced with consumers, or those with experiential expertise of the phenomenon in question.

This seminar will explore the barriers to redressing the power imbalances between psychologists and those with lived experience, and the benefits that can be achieved in doing so. Importantly, steps to meaningful coproduction will be introduced, so that strategies to collaborative psychology services, knowledge production, and knowledge dissemination can be realised. Dr Scholz will also reflect on his own practices in coproduction, to share some of the ways he has failed and some of the ways he has succeeded in meaningful collaborations with consumers. His most recent collaboration with consumers was in co-planning and co-designing the triage guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic in the ACT.