Excluding Experts in Inclusive Prac4ce: Epistemic Oppression and Existent Barriers in Coproduced Approaches to Mental Health

Wilde, Alana Jessie Shephard (2025) Excluding Experts in Inclusive Prac4ce: Epistemic Oppression and Existent Barriers in Coproduced Approaches to Mental Health. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis provides an understanding of the ways in which those with lived experience of mental ill health try, but o;en fail, to affect shi;s in our scien=fic understanding in coproduced research. Such failure, I argue, is best understood as a kind of epistemic oppression. This is because, I argue in line with Morten Byskov’s (2021) extension of Miranda Fricker’s (2007) account of epistemic injus=ce, there is reason to believe that lived experience may, in the right circumstances, give rise to a kind of exper=se: exper=se by experience. And individuals with lived experience are invited to take part in coproduced research principally because of their acquaintance with mental ill health. Failure to heed their knowledge, can then be understood as undermining such experts by experience in their capacity as knowers. I argue that several accounts of epistemic injus=ce fail to adequately explain the phenomena that this thesis considers, though note that whether a theory is deemed apt for our purposes will depend upon what we are aPemp=ng to make sense of. Giving a preference for a systemic understanding of the injus=ce I consider, I apply Kris=e Dotson’s (2014) framework of third order epistemic oppression to coproduc=on. This view neatly allows us to see that s=gma, power, and what one wants to contribute to shared understandings all play a role in whether one can be taken seriously. The polariza=on of pre-theore=cal commitments as they relate to psychiatric medicine, I lastly consider, makes the task of taking experts by experience at their word, however, challenging to say the least.