Transcript: Guidelines for Mental Health Data Science Research


Dr Sue Fletcher-Watson describes her team's project which aims to create stakeholder led guidelines for Mental Health Data Science research. They want to understand the public's priorities and concerns when it comes to sharing mental health data.

They are therefore collecting views via their online survey, which is open to anyone in the UK, regardless of their experience (or inexperience) with mental health conditions.

The survey results will then be used to inform the creation of guidelines for researchers on the use of mental health data.


Hi. My name is Sue Fletcher Watson. I'm a psychologist here at the University of Edinburgh and my team are working on stakeholder led guidelines for mental health data science.

So, what that means is we're working with stakeholders in the community that includes people with experience of mental health conditions, their friends and family and colleagues and also charities who represent them. And we're trying to understand what their priorities and concerns are around mental health data science, in terms of building better practices for sharing mental health data, so that we can help people with mental health conditions.

We believe that that platform needs to be trusted and valued by people in the community.

So the first stage of our project is that we're developing and circulating an online survey. You can complete the survey on this website it's open to absolutely anyone in the UK regardless of your experience of mental health. And we'll be using that information to understand what people's concerns are and what their priorities are for mental health data science.

Then we'll be following up with a smaller group of experts to develop best practice guidelines. So the idea is to end up with a concise checklist of best practice that researchers and clinicians can use to guide what they're doing and make sure that it's in line with what the community want.


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