An action research project exploring how lived-experience experts can support recovery processes and how this role can be developed in a way that fits the specific social and cultural context of Curaçao.
Curaçao is a small island society where social relationships are strongly interconnected. At the same time, shame, stigma, and religious norms often influence how people deal with mental health problems. Because “everyone knows each other,” it can be difficult to speak openly about vulnerability or to seek help.
In the Netherlands, lived-experience experts — people who use their own experience with mental disruption to support others — have become an important part of recovery-oriented care. On Curaçao, this role was still barely developed.
Lived-experience expertise can create recognition, trust, and hope in recovery processes. But for this role to work well on Curaçao, it needed to be shaped carefully within the local context.
This project helped open space for a new way of thinking about recovery, vulnerability, and the professional value of lived experience. :
The project aimed to explore how lived-experience experts could play a role within mental health care on Curaçao. Three central goals guided the work.
Explore how lived-experience experts can be involved in ways that are meaningful, safe, and fitting for Curaçao’s social context.
Build awareness and support among organizations, professionals, and local partners for the value of experiential knowledge.
Use existing methods from the Netherlands as a starting point and adapt them where needed to the Curaçao context.
The project used action research, meaning that professionals, organizations, and people from the field actively contributed to developing new ways of working.
The project worked with action research so that people directly involved in the field could think along, experiment, evaluate, and adjust the approach together.
Existing interventions from the Netherlands were used as a basis and adapted where necessary to fit Curaçao’s local situation.
By experimenting together with local partners, the project created room to discover what works within a small island society.
The project produced important insights into how lived-experience expertise can be shaped in the Curaçao context and contributed to a foundation for further development.
This project helped move lived-experience expertise from an unfamiliar idea toward a role that could be further developed within recovery-oriented care and support on Curaçao.
This page is based on the project description and overview text provided in the project document.
By exploring what fits the local context, the project contributed to future development of recovery-oriented support and the professional use of experiential knowledge.