To HATE the phrase "lived experience"?

[ThisFluentBiscuit]

Pet peeve incoming:

By definition, experience is lived! You can hardly have an experience without living it, fgs! And what's the opposite of lived experience? An experience that you've had, yet haven't lived? It's complete nonsense. It's used to sound falsely clever when an argument is weak, like "In my personal experience." Well, of course your experience is personal! You would hardly say, "In my neighbour's experience, I find Florida too cold in December."

And it's officially wrong, because it's a tautology. Like "top-floor penthouse."

I don't know whether it's the innate stupidity of the phrase or the fact that it's a linguistic fad that annoys me the most.

"stamps off"

It's a weird turn of phrase in 'real life'. I work as a mental health nurse and my colleagues are experienced in mental health, but they may not have lived experience. You also specifically involve people with lived experience in research projects to make sure it's appropriate. It's used very clearly to contrast your position as a professional Vs position as a patient. Hear I think it has a clear linguistic difference.

I have lived experience of being gay, people who aren't gay can have experiences of homophobia by witnessing it, but they can't live it.

Really though, who cares??? This is such a non issue...

At last I’ve found my person! I hate it too. I also find it utterly patronising.

I refuse to use it and say ‘direct experience’ instead. If you’ve supported someone through something personally or professionally (e.g. a loved one through cancer treatment), you have some experience of what it’s like but not direct experience.

I also hate the term ‘multiple and complex needs’. We all have multiple and complex needs FFS.

Incorrect.

When a health professional is said to have experience in something, the implication is that it's professional.

Sorry, no. Experience what each have of different things. And 'lived experience' is subjective, anecdotal, it cannot be the basis of decisions or legislation, which need to be based on actual, real facts, not anecdotes about what happened to me.

I hate the way its used.

Its used as a Top Trumps. As if its the highest form of evidence that one can never question as 'its my lived experience.'

There was a person on here asking for views on a alternative therapy, and when people gave her the actual evidence base on the (no more than placebo) effectiveness of this treatment, she dismissed this as 'she wanted lived experiences as lived experience is just as valid.'

No its not. For nearly all of human history all we had in terms of medicine was ' 'lived experience' and that led to people suffering horribly and dying. The scientific model of investigation transformed medicine.

@Greywarden On the mental health worker side, it is awkward to say 'I have experience of working with people experiencing schizophrenia'.

Yes, that would be an awful sentence. You would probably recast it to say "I have frequently worked with people experiencing schizophrenia" or some such.

Your explanation of the term "lived experience" actually makes the most sense out of the replies on here, because it makes me see how social services tie themselves in knots attempting not to "other" people (which is good!) and in doing so, come up with tautologies like "lived experience."

Love you! In a nutshell!

I'm largely with the OP - it is normally used on recruitment adverts etc as a way of trying to be sensitive when talking about things like racism, abuse, marginalisation, etc. The word 'experience' would absolutely suffice. It is totally clear from the context they are talking about people who experience X, not people who work in the field of X. It's just not necessary. They don't use the word 'professional' in front of all the other kinds of 'experience' they talk about.

The one situation offered here that I do think adds credence to the term is the wartime correspondent thing. Clive Myrie has experienced war because he's been in those war zones enough to warrant being able to say he's experienced it, but he doesn't have 'lived experience' of war. There's a sense where 'lived experience' means 'prolonged exposure throughout your life'.

Mainly, it's annoying because it is often little more than virtue signalling.

I voted yabu because lived experience is massively different and better than somebody who has done a course. It makes such a difference.

But that's not what happens - a small group of people with a very skewed experience have a disproportionate influence on decisions on research direction or funding or government policy. I've seen this in government committees and often the civil servants don't have the experience (or bravery) to say that the priorities of the (generally mildly affected) people in their group do not reflect the common problems reported by the more severely affected people I meet in clinic. It's the people who shout loudest who get heard - whilst the ones who can't articulate for themselves get ignored. Professionals with broad experience of seeing a wide range of people may have more representative knowledge than someone with a mild condition. Schizophrenia is a good example- someone with severe treatment resistant schizophrenia is going to struggle to engage. If you see someone talking about their lived experience of schizophrenia it's fairly safe to assume they are at the milder end of the scale otherwise they wouldn't be talking about it in a comprehensible manner!

No it really makes a difference. This is widely recognised.

Yes, exactly....professional experience of treating that condition.

HRTFT because it’s too early in the morning so apologies if this has already been said.

@ThisFluentBiscuit the term “lived experience” is a qualitative research method/methodological approach to uncovering the contexts, meanings and emotions attached to an individual’s experience of a phenomena. It makes sense in the qualitative research field but it has found its way into everyday life ie outwith the context of its research-related meaning. A bit like the difference between “significant” in everyday life and “significant” in the context of experimental research/statistics - two different meanings and contexts.

You are kinda contradicting yourself in your arguments that it is “just experience” because the term “lived experience” is intended to differentiate between those who have lived through a particular experience the researcher is interested in (for example, DV, adoption, PND or whatever) and those whose “experience” of it is as a witness, health care professional, friend or whatever.

So the reasons you are giving for it being a useless term are the same as your reasons for the term being useful. Your argument is actually a non sequitur.

Using the word 'lived'? Is there a study that shows using the word 'lived' gets more positive engagement than exactly the same phrase just using the word 'experience'?

I think a mix is important. Qualitative research is also crucial where patients are involved. There's no point developing something like a new approach to treating self-harm if it offends the people who would receive it. People's subjective experiences of a treatment are important to research studies to make them ethical.

Also, for example, if a patient is starting an antipsychotic, for example, you can show them the evidence based all you want but sometimes, people just want to know other's personal experience of taking a drug!

I have witnessed a mental health crisis, in that I have seen a stranger suffer one. I have experience of mental health crises, as I have helped people I am close to navigate them. I don’t have lived experience of mental health crises as I’ve never had one.

How would you distinguish the last two scenarios? Witnessed is different to experienced.

I probably wouldn’t use the phrase lived experience but it means something different to experience, even if there were better words (eg direct experience).

Actually, no, it would not suffice. If I need to recruit a counsellor who has lived experience of say, living with HIV, then I need to be abuntantly clear that's what I want. It also needs to be made clear in as few words as possible.

I'm finding it quite interesting how this feels quite an important differentiation.
I am usually a bit of a pedant when it comes to these sorts of terms. Yesterday I told my teenager to stop using the term ATM machine and we had a discussion about tautology. I would argue that lived experience doesn't meet the parameters of a tautology because it has a different meaning to those working in the field of support services.

This is what I was trying to get across, but you did it far more eloquently 🤣

The terms are literally just to differentiate professional vs personal stances in research literature. There is a clear linguistic difference in that setting. Everyone knows what those terms mean in research.

But anyway. What an argumentative thread over such a non-issue.

If I had done a course in hairdressing, I would have experience as a hairdresser. It would be pretty limited experience, sure. But the hairdresser of thirty years' experience wouldn't have lived experience whereas I had non-lived experience. She would have much more experience than I would. The difference is in the amount of experience, not that she was alive while she experienced hairdressing but I was dead while I experienced it.

Let's say the course was about how to box safely, but involved no boxing. It was all theory. You would never claim to have experience of boxing just from taking a class in boxing-safety theory. You would say, "I took a class on boxing safety, but I've never actually boxed."

Of course. Lived experience is often used to differentiate from professional experience or academic knowledge. Indirect experience of an issue, if you like.

I don't think it's used as top trumps I think it is just trying to ensure that all voices are heard. I work in some service creation and I think it's essential that you have the voices of management, frontline workers, other service providers, the local authority, the community sector, carers and also people who have lived experience of whatever issue it is you're tackling. For a very long time those last two the carers and people have lived experience did not have any input into a service creation. They shouldn't have all the input but they definitely need to have a voice that is listen to and taken into account.

Is this the five minute argument or the full half hour? I need to know because of which popcorn to buy.

You think OP that everyone gets the difference in "shorthand" when the midwife says I have experience in twin births. But the need for a special qualifier on "experience" has a sociolinguistic rationale.

It indicates a realisation we have had in the modern world. We now recognise that to deliver (often public) services effectively and ethically we need to promote and elevate the experience of people who have actually personally had the experience themselves, as we design and deliver those services.

The fact is for centuries people have blurred the "experience" line and the expert in delivering twin babies has always been given more voice than the woman birthing those babies.

A qualifier is there to signal positive intent. Lots of language change is there to underline and emphasise a particular meaning within the set of wider meanings of a noun. It's no biggie. Sometimes stuff changes.

Public transport
Mobile phone
Accessible toilet
Online dating

The world is full of adjective-noun combos that signal a certain type of something within a wider noun.

The subtle and rather nice part of this one, is that it allows you to emphasise a person's experience without defining them by it. In this thread alone, we have had the words
victim
autistic person
Schizophrenic person

etc etc

Not everyone who has grown up in care, say, or has autism, always wants to be named and defined as a care leaver or autistic. They are always much more than that.

So a care experienced young person or a person with lived experience of care honours their other assets and attributes, doesnt define them by their experience.

I'm amazed you can't see that.

If you have delivered lots of babies you are an experienced midwife, who has experienced lots of births. If you give birth to a baby you have lived experience of childbirth. They are grammatically not the same thing. You are perfectly at liberty to dislike the expression, but you are incorrect to conflate the two.