About
The Lived Experience Hub is a website that aims to bring information about the mental health lived experience movement into one convenient location.
What You'll Find Here
On this website you will find:
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A comprehensive exploration of the lived experience movement—bringing together its many components into one unified space.
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​A global strategy that outlines how the movement can come together as a coordinated and powerful force.
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​A wide range of easy-to-understand videos that explain key concepts and models across the movement.
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​A curated database of lived experience organisations from around the world, organised by type and linked directly to their websites.
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​Valuable resources to support learning, connection, and action.
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​A growing collection of impactful lived experience books that are shaping the movement.
Who's It For?
The Lived Experience Hub is designed for anyone who is part of—or seeking to understand—the lived experience movement.
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It is for people with lived experience who are looking to connect, learn, and find pathways into advocacy, peer work, and community.
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It is for peer workers and practitioners who want to deepen their understanding, access resources, and see how their work fits into a broader global system.
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It is for organisations and service providers who are seeking to embed lived experience more meaningfully into their work. In particular it is focused for organisations and services to see what currently exists so they do not have to reinvent the wheel.
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It is for researchers, students, and educators who want access to a structured, global view of the movement and its evolving models.
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And it is for policymakers and system leaders who are looking to understand how lived experience can be integrated into services, systems, and workforce development.
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Ultimately, this platform is for anyone who recognises the value of lived experience—and wants to be part of building a more connected, informed, and unified movement.
Global Reach
The Lived Experience Hub is not just an Australian or local platform—it is global in scope and vision.
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It maps lived experience systems across countries, bringing together organisations, initiatives, and models from around the world into one connected space.
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By doing this, it reveals patterns—how the movement develops, where it is strongest, and how different regions are building lived experience into their systems.
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This global perspective allows us to move beyond isolated efforts and begin to see the movement as a coordinated, evolving ecosystem.
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The Hub is helping to build a shared global picture—one that supports learning, connection, and the ongoing development of the lived experience movement worldwide.
The Framework Behind The Hub
The Lived Experience Hub is built on a structured framework that maps how the movement operates and evolves.
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At its core are six key domains that represent the major components of the lived experience movement: advocacy and leadership, consumer-driven initiatives, alternatives to traditional psychiatry, anti-stigma campaigns, peer work, and mad studies. Together, these domains capture the full ecosystem of activity happening across the movement.
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Alongside this, the Hub maps how lived experience systems develop over time. What often begins as small, community-led support grows into collective voice and advocacy, then into organised initiatives and services. From there, it progresses into system integration—where lived experience is embedded into policy, workforce, and service delivery—and ultimately into systemisation, where fully developed, interconnected infrastructures are in place.
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By combining these domains with a clear developmental pathway, the Hub moves beyond being a simple directory of information. It becomes a form of intelligent infrastructure—helping to map, understand, and support the growth of the lived experience movement at both local and global levels.
The Bigger Picture
The Lived Experience Hub is part of something much larger than a single platform.
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It sits within the emergence of a global lived experience movement—one that is growing across countries, cultures, and systems, and beginning to organise itself at scale.
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As this movement evolves, it is moving toward systemisation—where lived experience is no longer fragmented or isolated, but embedded across entire systems. This includes leadership, workforce, services, spaces, communication networks, and alternative models of care working together as a coordinated whole.
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The Hub contributes to this shift by supporting the development of shared infrastructure. By mapping organisations, connecting initiatives, and revealing global patterns, it helps build the foundations for a more integrated and aligned movement.
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In this way, the Lived Experience Hub is not just a source of information—it is part of the infrastructure that enables the movement to grow, connect, and organise itself on a global scale.
Get Involved
The Lived Experience Hub is not just a platform to explore—it’s a space to contribute, connect, and help shape the future of the movement.
If you know of a lived experience organisation, initiative, or service, you can help strengthen the global picture by submitting it to the Hub.
If you have valuable resources, tools, or insights, you are invited to share them so others can learn and benefit.
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If you are part of the lived experience community, this is your space to connect with the broader movement and see how your voice fits into a growing global system.
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And if you are working across organisations, services, or systems, there are opportunities to collaborate—building connections that move the movement forward together.
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Because the strength of the lived experience movement comes from participation.
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And every contribution helps bring it closer to a more connected, unified, and impactful global force.
Built From Lived Experience
The Lived Experience Hub is grounded in real, lived experience.
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It has been shaped by firsthand understanding of mental health challenges, navigating systems, and the journey of recovery, advocacy, and connection. This perspective informs not only what is included on the platform, but how it is structured—ensuring that it reflects the realities, needs, and strengths of the community it represents.
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At the same time, the Hub is supported by professional experience across the mental health sector, including work in coordination, systems, and service delivery. This combination allows it to bridge lived experience with system-level thinking.
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The result is a platform that is both authentic and practical—designed not just to represent the movement, but to support its growth, connection, and impact.
Meet The Creator of the Website
Andrew Turtle is a systems-level thinker and lived experience advocate dedicated to mapping and strengthening the global mental health landscape.
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His work began with The Consumer Journey (2021), where he mapped the mental health system from a consumer perspective—bringing clarity to what is often experienced as complex, fragmented, and difficult to navigate.
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In 2025, he expanded this vision with Lived Experience Power, published with Chipmunka. This work set out to map the lived experience movement itself—capturing its organisations, models, and emerging global structure in one place.
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The Lived Experience Hub is the next evolution of that work.
It transforms insight into a dynamic, interactive platform—designed to connect, map, and unify the lived experience movement across countries, systems, and communities. More than a website, the Hub is infrastructure: making visible what already exists, reducing duplication, and enabling collaboration at scale.
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But this work sits within an even broader vision.
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Andrew’s work explores humanity’s place within a larger evolutionary timeline—mapping not only systems on Earth, but humanity’s unfolding role within the universe. He envisions a future where fragmented systems evolve into coherent, interconnected structures across health, society, technology, and consciousness.
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Within this future, lived experience becomes foundational.
It is no longer peripheral, but a guiding intelligence—shaping how systems are designed, how care is delivered, and how societies understand what it means to be human.
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The Lived Experience Hub represents an early layer of this future.
It is part of a larger effort to build the infrastructure of a more connected, aware, and integrated world—where knowledge is shared, systems are visible, and humanity moves forward with greater clarity and purpose.
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This is not just about mapping what exists.
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It is about helping to shape what comes next.
Proudly designed by Andrew Turtle