A new mental health consultative focus group for UK ex-Service personnel and their families with lived experience of mental health issues is planned for Tuesday 27th September 2016 in a central London location.

Participant views will help inform the Research Priorities of Forces in Mind Trust’s Mental Health Research Programme (MHRP), a multi-million pound research programme with an annual disbursement of £1 million for up to 5 years.  The research programme was launched in October 2015 and is run in collaboration with the Centre for Mental Health and the King’s Centre for Military Health Research (KCMHR), part of King’s College London.

The Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT), established in 2012 to help ex-Service personnel and their families make a successful transition back to civilian life, has as one of its founding priorities the aim ‘to promote better mental health and well-being’ and ‘to build organisations’ capacity to deliver evidence-based prevention and rehabilitation’.  Since 2012, FiMT has worked hard to develop an understanding of the mental health environment, and to identify where the Trust can best deploy its finite resources to maximum effect, ultimately to help inform and influence policy makers and service deliverers in order to enable ex-Service personnel and their families lead more successful and fulfilling civilian lives.

For more information on the MHRP, please visit https://www.fim-trust.org/mental-health/research-programme , or if you or your family have served in the UK Armed Forces, have lived experience of mental health issues, and would like to participate in the workshop, please apply by 19th August through the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MHRPWorkshop.  Successful applications to participate will be informed by 26th August as numbers are limited.