"lived experience"

Isn't it essentially the same thing as "first-hand experience"?

Just as an example - I have no disabilities, but my mother is blind and so throughout my life I have probably been considerably been more interested in, involved with, and impacted by blindness than the average person. SHE has first-hand experience of being blind, I have second-hand experience, a long-term friend of mine who doesn't know my mother well (or at all) but has listened to me talk about blindness a lot has third-hand experience.

My mother has lived experience of blindness, I have lived experience of living with and in some cases caring for a blind person. Someone else can be a medical expert on blindness without having been in either of these situations. I don't think that "lived experience" is the only thing that matters, but it is often a relevant consideration and it's useful to have a way to describe it.

Unfortunately, the cynic in me thinks that "lived experience" has evolved defensively, out of situations where some people might be proactively claiming experiences they do not actually have.

Ditto ‘reaching out’ versus ‘asking’.

I remember the controversy with that book "American Dirt" the woman who wrote it got cancelled because she didn't have "lived experience" but she had researched it carefully and it was a work of fiction. It was well written and insightful, it shows lived experience is not always necessary to understand or empathise

This is used in my place if work, local authority housing/homelessness . Lived experience of homelessness. I think its ok to use in that context.

I just read this in a review about a book called ‘Scarcely English: An A to Z of Assaults on Our Language’.

But yes as above, recently I was harassed in the street, I have lived experience of that, my friend who was with me has experienced what that was like for me by virtue of being present

Everyone's now got "mental health", hilarious isn't it OP?

The issue with your fantastic post @Iam4eels is that it assumes the OP is posting in good faith and seeking to understand the differences between the words and how/where they might be applicable.

In my experience as a disabled person "lived experience" in the Health and Social Care Settings means :

We intend to financially abuse disabled people in exchange for their knowledge whilst packaging it as an amazing system benefiting all involved

Experience= “I am a BBC journalist. I grew up in Surrey and went to public school & Oxford. I visited Mansfield once and spoke to some poor, uneducated warehouse workers who voted for Brexit and for Boris. This qualifies me to talk about the ‘Red Wall’ on TV”.

Lived experience = “I’m from Mansfield. My dad was a miner, so were his mates until they were all made redundant when Thatcher closed the pit. The town never recovered. I work in a warehouse on minimum wage. I tried asking for a pay rise, but the boss said that if I didn’t want the job, there were 10 Polish immigrants who would replace me. That’s why I voted for Brexit & the Tories ; to stop immigrants taking our jobs”.

Op, you sound like someone who will call people « snowflakes » and cry about everything now being “woke lefties”. A K….

It distinguishes it from professional experience.

Eg. I have professional experience with the mental health care system.

Vs

I have loved experience with the mental health care system.

If I was building an advisory group I might recruit for a mix of the two so that consumer perspectives are heard.

It's really not confusing and could have been googled.

It makes sense in my field which is mental health. So I could hire a therapist with experience of treating depression / anxiety. But they might also say they have lived experience of dealing with a mental health problem.

Lived experience means you got the experience by living through it. So someone might have experience of EUPD by working with people with it, but I have lived experience as I have EUPD.

Yeah exactly that saraclara.

I think, though, that for the most part "lived experience" is a phrase that should probably remain reserved for those circumstances it was developed for e.g. within services, to both define and also give legitimacy to the different kinds of experience that people within or interacting with the service may have.

Professional, clinical, personal, lived, etc. as experience labels are useful in those circumstances, where you're looking to generically describe a group of people who have experience within a certain category (perhaps you're advertising for peer workers, or want to set up a staff forum for mental health workers who have mental illness), but in everyday discussion I think it's usually better to just say "I've recovered from PTSD" or "I'm supporting a close family member with schizophrenia" or "I have a child who wakes six times a night" or "I work on a psychiatric ward as an HCA" or "I have a longstanding mental illness" or "I'm a psychotherapist for bereaved children".

"Lived experience" is deliberately generic to cover a wide range of people (like "clinical experience" is), and is liable to be misunderstood by people who haven't come across the jargon.

It has already been pointed out that lived experience clarifies what kind of personal experience someone has had.

@JarByTheDoor put it well:
I have lived experience of bipolar disorder, which is a subset of personal experience. My DP has personal experience of bipolar disorder (mine) but not lived experience, as he doesn't have it himself, and certainly not professional experience. So while we both have personal experience, only I have the lived experience. My doctor may not have either lived experience or personal experience with bipolar disorder (or they may happen to), but they will have professional experience.

My DH had a breakdown. So I have personal experience of a breakdown, but I still don't know how it actually feels to have one. His was lived experience. Mine was personal experience.

It is woke baby. But yeah... annoying.... especially if one is an old fart ones self.

I don't think so, not in my experience. Usually they want to share their 'story' or their experience in order to improve things for the next set of people / patients, or to support others.

I hate the phrase 'lived experience'. As @CrunchyCarrot says it just used to be called 'personal experience' and I would still use that.

Quite an important distinction imo - ‘experience’ can be direct or indirect, for example you may have experience of a certain condition for example if you have come across it in your work/in your family. Although if you have direct experience of having a certain condition because you have it, then you have lived experience. Similarly, we all have lived experience of a pandemic because we have lived through one. At least that’s the way I understand it!

Lived in experience usually applies to people who want to tell ‘their truth’.

Yabu.

People use lived experience Vs experience for the numerous examples you've been given.

It's only wanky when someone uses it incorrectly, thinking they sound impressive.

I think it can be useful as above
. Saw a job recently for working with children in care. Lived experience was mentioned, ie people who have been in care themselves

This exactly.

If you grew up in care then you have lived experience of the care system. If you’ve worked in it as a social worker you have experience of it.

It's one of those academic-type phrases that others on this thread have explained has specific meaning within certain contexts.

Sadly outside those contexts such phrases get incorporated into everyday language and are usually horrendously misused. In this case most of the times I've seen it used in this way is to try and deny factual evidence and data in favour of personal anecdote.