Breaking barriers: centering researchers with lived experience in psychiatric neuroscience

Researchers with lived experience (RWLE) of serious mental illness or substance use disorders (SMI/SUD) bring critical dual expertise to psychiatric neuroscience as both scientists and individuals directly affected by the conditions they study. Yet their participation and leadership remain profoundly limited by entrenched stigma, disclosure risks that can obstruct promising career trajectories, lack of mentorship from senior RWLE, and the absence of structural protections against discrimination and exclusion. These systemic barriers silence voices that can help transform the field's understanding of mental illness and its biological underpinnings. Drawing on the authors' lived and/or professional experiences, this Perspective challenges the assumption that lived experience introduces bias, reframing it as a source of empirical strength, innovation, and epistemic diversity. Here, the authors propose structural reforms to reshape admissions, mentorship, and leadership pathways. Centering RWLE is both a scientific necessity and an ethical imperative for advancing a more equitable and representative psychiatric neuroscience.