Rachel joined King’s in 2022, having previously worked as a lived experience consultant with King’s and UCL via the Mental Health Policy Research Unit. She has an MA in Applied Linguistics and Communication from Birkbeck, University of London, where she researched the experience of voice-hearing in multilingual people. She has taught MSc students and DClinPsy students at London South Bank University and the University of Essex, covering lived experience / survivor knowledge and the psychiatric system. She has also run several full-day training programmes via the London Hearing Voices Network on critical approaches to the construct of “Borderline Personality Disorder”, and writes and campaigns on this topic.

Research Interests

• Lived experience / survivor research in mental health
• Lived experience and research ethics
• Self-harm and suicidality, critiques of and alternatives to “Borderline Personality Disorder”

Expertise and Public Engagement

• Trustee for National Survivor User Network, a user-led mental health organisation.
• Writing and illustration on lived experience in mental health, e.g. https://www.mentalhealthtoday.co.uk/blog/diagnosis/we-can-discuss-mental-health-care-responses-but-leave-my-personality-out-of-it 

Key publications

• Gillard, S., Dare, C., Hardy, J., Rowan Olive, R., Shah, P., Birken, M., Foye, U., Pearce, E., Stefanidou, T., Pitman, A., Simpson, A., Johnson, S., & Lloyd-Evans, B. Experiences of living with mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: a coproduced, participatory qualitative interview study. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 56, 1447–1457 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-021-02051-7
• Johnson S, Dalton-Locke C, Juan N, Foye U, Oram S, Papamichail A, Landau S, Olive R, Jeynes T, Shah P, Rains L, Lloyd-Evans B, Carr S, Killaspy H, Gillard S, Simpson A (2020). Impact on mental health care and on mental health service users of the COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed methods survey of UK mental health care staff. (and accompanying lived experience commentary) Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 56, 25–37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01927-4
• Lived experience commentaries with Patrick Nyikavaranda on:
• Walker, S; Mackay, E; Barnett, P; Sheridan Rains, L; Leverton, M; Dalton-Locke, C; Trevillion, K; Lloyd-Evans, B; Johnson, S; - view fewer (2019) Clinical and social factors associated with increased risk for involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and narrative synthesis. The Lancet Psychiatry , 6 (12) pp. 1039-1053. 10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30406-7.
• Molyneaux, E., Turner, A., Candy, B., Landau, S., Johnson, S., & Lloyd-Evans, B. (2019). Crisis-planning interventions for people with psychotic illness or bipolar disorder: Systematic review and meta-analyses. BJPsych Open, 5(4), E53. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2019.28