Holding duality in mental health research and practice: towards the meaningful integration of dual-positioned researchers

This Article examines the epistemic tensions experienced by researchers who occupy both professional academic roles and lived mental health experience—”dual-positioned researchers” (DPRs)—within institutional research settings and some of the similar and unique challenges they face compared to lived experience researchers. It frames the argument as epistemic silencing viewed through multiple levels: interpersonal silencing, systemic silencing, cultural silencing, and intrapersonal silencing. It argues that declarations of inclusion may conceal structural discomfort when DPRs disclose lived and learned experience. This relational exclusions constrain the potential of lived experience to drive research innovation. The Article calls for an ethics of relational holding in research cultures, where inclusion is substantively hosted, and offers suggestions for how this may be operationalised. It is timely for mental health scholarship grappling with power, legitimacy, and epistemic pluralism in innovation.