NSUN is a membership organisation creating a mental health justice movement to fight harmful systems and build better alternatives.
As England’s only lived experience-led national mental health charity, we connect, support and amplify the voices and work of our members: people with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress or trauma, as well as user-led grassroots groups.
We envision a world with a just approach to mental health, where we all have the freedom to give and receive care on our own terms. To make this a reality, we:
Build and share knowledge. We platform critical lived experience perspectives through blogs and research, bring together opportunities from across the lived experience landscape to share with members, and create spaces for connection, change-making and solidarity.
Disrupt harmful systems. Our policy work challenges the structures and practices that create and exacerbate distress – including within the mental health system itself – and connects mental health to issues of social, political and economic justice.
Resource the grassroots. Our capacity-building work supports the sustainability of user-led groups and campaigns through training, networking, resources, advice and funding.
You can find out more about what we do by taking a look at our Theory of Change and by reading about our mission, vision, and values.
Our guiding principles
Thinking critically
We take a political and rights-based approach to our work. We focus on the social and material determinants of distress: the impacts of government policy, systemic marginalisation, and issues of state violence. This includes institutional abuse, neglect, and coercion in mental health care. You find out more about our approach to policy and campaigns work here.
We also work with a critical understanding of mental ill-health, distress, or trauma, and respect the different ways in which people understand and describe their lived experiences. We critique narratives that pathologise, individualise, and depoliticise distress. We advocate for autonomy, self-determination, and the freedom of choice in mental health care.
Resisting tokenism
We have our roots in the UK survivor/service user movement; you can read more about our history and the language we use here. Our work has always been underpinned by the ethos of ‘nothing about us without us’.
The concepts of lived experience, peer support, and co-production were developed by survivors, service users, and Disabled people, and NSUN has championed them for decades. But they are increasingly tokenised and co-opted in healthcare, policy, research, and the charity sector.
NSUN fights for people with lived experience to create and lead change, not just take part on someone else’s terms. We also carefully consider invitations of a ‘seat at the table’, choosing not to engage if we see limited involvement of different perspectives or little opportunity for meaningful change.
Nurturing the grassroots
NSUN builds the capacity of grassroots user-led groups: groups led ‘by and for’ people with shared identities or marginalisations. Many groups don’t explicitly describe themselves as primarily mental health-focussed, but often campaign against the conditions driving distress and offer support – emotional, cultural, material, practical, or financial – that meet community-specific needs.
User-led groups are usually small, informal, and volunteer-led, and their needs are rarely met. Charity funding structures often exclude them and keep them precarious. We work to support and resource these groups directly, while making the case for their often-invisible labour to be valued and funded.
Explore our work
To find out what all of this looks like in practice, you might want to read our latest news, catch up on our policy briefings and articles, explore the lived experience-led research we have published, or read some of our members’ blogs.
Join the movement
NSUN membership is free and open to individuals with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress, or trauma, as well as user-led groups.
You’ll get our weekly bulletin with updates on our work, plus news, events, and opportunities from across the lived experience landscape. You can also take part in our projects and events. If you do not have first-hand lived experience but would like to stay updated with NSUN’s work, you can sign up as a supporter.