Who did we work with?

The iPOF team included people with a range of academic, clinical, and lived expertise who worked together to develop, test, and refine programme theories about online mental health forums. Researchers from Lancaster University and The University of Manchester had expertise in psychology, linguistics, computer science, statistics, and health economics. Team members from Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust had clinical experience running mental health forums. We also set up a co-design group which included people with personal experience of using mental health forums and working in them as moderators. The group was facilitated by experts in mental health peer support.

iPOF partnered with 7 UK-based mental health forums. These forums operated in different ways and had diverse areas of focus across mental health. Some were run by the UK National Health services, several were hosted by charities, and others were operated by corporate organisations. This helped us to understand the range of ways forums work in the real world.