Frequently Asked Questions

We want to design a digital tool that helps the public, researchers, and patients easily explore mental health data. Instead of experts building something in isolation, we want to build it with you so that it actually answers the questions you care about, in plain language that makes sense.

Absolutely not! We need you to help us figure out what questions matter most, what words feel clear, and how the tool should look and feel. However, if you have a background in the above let us know in the interest form and we will try to match you with certain tasks.

The tasks we would like help with run over discrete time periods. We are recruiting to a network and will call upon people to respond at different times during the project. We estimate that each task would take the form of a half day workshop with 2-3 follow-up meetings.

We follow the NIHR guidelines and will offer payment according to the time and preparation needed for each task. For more information, see the NIHR public contributor reward policy. We will arrange for a bank transfer to your bank account.

Everyone involved in co-producing the Open Psychiatry Project — staff, researchers and people with lived experience alike — will work to a shared code of conduct, agreed together with our lived experience group. This sets out what respectful, safe collaboration looks like, and applies equally to every member of the team.

Any concern about someone’s behaviour will be taken seriously and acted on straight away. You’ll always know who to contact if something happens or doesn’t feel right, for example, our PWLE facilitator or a named member of the executive committee. If a breach of the code of conduct is confirmed, the person responsible will be removed from the team or task group.

What’s discussed within the group stays within the group. You can contribute fully to co-production without disclosing details of your own experience if you’d rather not.

We keep a project-wide impact register that logs the suggestions and ideas that came from people with lived experience and what happened as a result: whether that’s a change we made, a change still in progress, or something we weren’t able to take forward and why. We’ll share this back with the group regularly, so there’s always a visible line from what you said to what we did.

Yes, alongside the project’s impact register, we’ll offer a short, optional reflection template you can fill in at the end of each task or task group, with a few simple prompts (like what you learned, what felt difficult, and whether you’d want to do it again). It’s entirely up to you whether you complete it, and whether you share it with the whole group at the follow-up meeting, just with your facilitator, or keep it private — there’s no expectation either way.

Genomics looks at how genes and variation in our genes might influence mental health. There are different functional genomics experiments and analyses that help us understand how a genetic variant or gene works and contributes to disease mechanisms. Tools like the Open Targets Platform combine biological research to show which genes or biological pathways might be linked to specific conditions or drug targets. We want to know: what questions would you want to ask a resource like this? (e.g., “Which genes are linked to depression?” or “Are there existing medicines targeting this biological pathway?”)

No. Researchers using the Open Psychiatry Project resources will never see or download individual-level data. Instead, a researcher submits a question they want answered, which is run automatically by secure software, either a data container or privacy-preserving federation software (Bitfount), at the location where the data is already stored. Only an anonymised summary result will be sent back to the researcher; the underlying data itself will never leave its secure environment and will never be viewed by anyone running the analysis.