Welcome to the Synergi Stories: Covid-19 eJournal survey, which aims to capture and document the narratives of ethnic minority people with lived experience of severe mental distress and their carers during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Why are we launching this survey?
Covid-19 is generating great uncertainty and social and economic conditions that are adversely impacting people’s mental and physical health, access to equitable treatment and access to relevant information. This has been amplified by the new Coronavirus Act 2020 and emergency changes being made to the Mental Health Act.
We are concerned that existing standards in mental health services, which are already demonstrably insufficient, will be reduced. We are also concerned that essential knowledge is not reaching ethnic minority people with lived experience of severe mental distress and their carers, including migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, along with insufficient opportunities for their stories to be visible, heard and shared as part of a supportive community for change.
How do we plan to use the information that you provide?
Synergi will use the information you provide to create an online journal as a platform:
The information and stories you share through this survey will help shape our understanding of the challenges you face, and how you are coping, and will inform and influence the first phase of the Synergi Stories: Covid-19 eJournal, a new online platform for ethnic minority people with lived experience, service users and carers to creatively share their stories and inform our work and, ultimately, policy.
Why we want to hear your stories
At the end of the survey, there are two sections (Coping with the Covid-19 lockdown and Your recommendations). Here we ask you to share your stories, in a variety of ways, from inspiring quotes to poetry to short stories to images, and to give recommendations of what materials or activities are helping you to cope at this challenging time. You can choose to have your story published anonymously on the online journal when it is created, or you can request for it not to be published but to be used for information only. Nothing from these two sections will be published without your permission.
We appreciate you taking the time to consider this request and to complete the survey. Your personal details will not be shared and you must be 18 and above to participate. You can see our privacy policy here.
Synergi Collaborative Centre
A large text version of this survey is available here
You can find out more about Synergi here.
Disclaimer
We reserve the right to sensitively edit, or not publish information that is potentially libellous* and/or reveals the identity of people or organisations mentioned without their consent.
*Libellous refers to statements that may be interpreted as false or unfair that are likely to negatively affect the reputation of a person or organisation.