Celebrating Helena Roennfeldt
Helena is an amazing lived experience researcher who has been building her research as a PhD candidate at the Centre MHN and with an MSEI Fellowship. Her PhD study entitled Beyond the Threshold: A Study of the Lived Experiences of People in Mental Health Crisis who have Accessed Crisis Care powerfully presents the voices of people regarding their intense experiences of mental health crisis and their use of emergency mental health service use, including EDs, phone lines and alternatives.
Helena has been extraordinarily productive, with seven published papers:
- Subjective Experiences of Mental Health Crisis Care in Emergency Departments: A Narrative Review of the Qualitative Literature
- Dark Night of the Soul: The Lived Experience and Meaning of Mental Health Crisis
- Advances in Mental Health The Anatomy of Crisis
- Exploring the Lived Experience of Receiving Mental Health Crisis Care at Emergency Departments, Crisis Phone Lines and Crisis Care Alternatives
- From Breaking Point to Potential Transformation: Temporal Sequencing of Mental Health Crisis
- Our Wished‐for Responses: Recommendations for Creating a Lived and Embodied Sense of Safety During Mental Health Crisis
- We can do better: Recommendations for mental health crisis care from people with lived experience.
Her work is already influencing policy and practice; it is referenced in Safercare Victoria's improvement work to implement the Zero Suicide Guidelines and at the Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health & Wellbeing.
Helena presented findings in an invited address the Woodcock Public Lecture; listen to this recording and also in a keynote at the Collab Conference 2024.
Helena has recently submitted her PhD thesis; she is taking a moment to breathe plus focusing on her research work with Griffith University and with MIND.