The podcast episode featured a conversation with Professor Sharon Lawn about mental health systems, lived experience, and the importance of humanising care for individuals with mental health challenges.

We discuss the need for more person-centered, compassionate approaches in mental health services and the value of incorporating lived experience perspectives into research, policy, and practice. The conversation emphasized the significance of community support, everyday acts of kindness, and treating individuals with dignity beyond their diagnoses to transform mental health care systems.

Sharon covered several key topics:

Personal and Professional Background

• Sharon's journey shaped by rural upbringing, family openness about mental health, and early career experiences working with veterans at a psychiatric hospital
• Her observational approach to understanding mental health systems and power dynamics

Lived Experience in Mental Health

• Definition and importance of lived experience work in valuing individuals' perspectives
• How to intentionally use lived experience to create understanding and humanize mental health services
• Challenges of incorporating lived experience safely and effectively in professional contexts

Dehumanisation and Systemic Issues

• The contrast between seeing people as humans versus focusing solely on diagnoses and symptoms
• Problems with impersonal language, labeling, and assumptions in mental health care
• How systems deflect responsibility by labeling patients as "non-compliant" or "too complex"

Transforming Mental Health Services

• The need for services to reach people in their own spaces rather than requiring them to seek help
• Importance of person-centered, proactive approaches versus crisis-driven systems
• Value of both formal and informal support systems, including community organizations

Humanisation and Connection

• Practical ways to show compassion through everyday acts like using people's names, bringing flowers to hospital visits
• The significance of small human connections and being seen
• Building community through simple gestures of kindness and acknowledgment

Based on the meeting discussion, Sharon Lawn recommends several specific changes for mental health systems:

Shift from Crisis-Driven to Proactive Care

• Services should reach out to people in their own spaces rather than requiring them to seek help
• Move away from reactive, crisis-driven approaches to more accessible, preventive care

Humanise and Personalise Services

• Use people's names and treat them with dignity and respect
• See individuals beyond their labels and diagnoses, recognizing their strengths and skills
• Stop using impersonal language and dehumanizing practices

Incorporate Lived Experience

• Increase representation of people with lived experience in the workforce
• Value and integrate lived experience perspectives into research, policy, and practice at every level
• Create safe spaces for people to share their experiences without reducing them to mere "performances"

Respect Autonomy and Rights

• Recognize individuals' autonomy and human rights in treatment settings
• Stop deflecting responsibility by labeling patients as "non-compliant" or "too complex"

Integrate Formal and Informal Support

• Recognize the value of both professional services and community-based organizations run by people with lived experience

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Episode #207 marks a moment of deep gratitude and reflection. In this special episode, I look back on the journey that shaped Thriving Minds from the early days of questioning how the brain works, through decades of neuroscience, to the new era we are stepping into together.

This episode explores how early life experiences shape the nervous system, why connection is a biological regulator, and how compassion, presence and daily habits drive real neuroplastic change and where AI and digital technologies will transform how we detect anxiety, personalise support, and understand the social brain, while reminding us that healing will always come from human connection.

We close the episode with the key takeaways from 2025—lessons to carry forward:

• Connection is medicine. Our brains regulate each other; synchrony is measurable and essential.
• Healing is relational. Being seen, understood and met with compassion changes the brain.
• Neuroplasticity is always possible. Small, consistent actions reshape circuits across the lifespan.
• ACEs matter, but they are not destiny. With awareness and support, resilience can be built at any age.
• Digital life must be redesigned for wellbeing. AI can enhance support—but human presence is irreplaceable.
• We are each other’s environment. The communities we build shape the next three generations.

A hopeful, science-grounded blueprint for anyone seeking resilience, clarity and a future built on seeing and supporting one another as we close out 2025.

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2025 has felt like a turning point.

Across this year’s Thriving Minds conversations—from brain health and dementia, to stress, team flow, near-death experiences, and the “neuroscience of two”—one message keeps rising to the surface:

We are only just beginning to understand how powerful we are for each other’s brains.

In this special reflection episode, I explore what we learned in 2025 and where Thriving Minds is heading next, at the intersection of neuroscience, healing, neuroplasticity and community.

We dive into the major shifts reshaping neuroscience today:
• The move from snapshots to living, dynamic brains, made possible by new imaging and genomic tools.
• The neuroscience of two (and many) with insights from Dr Joy Hirsch on interbrain synchrony and why being in the same room matters.
• Bioelectricity, fields and consciousness, inspired by conversations with Dr Bruce Greyson on near-death experiences.
• A “middle way” that unites rigorous science with lived experience, trauma, recovery and human stories.

We discuss how healing is changing—from a symptom-focused view to a relational, systemic model—where early life experiences shape the nervous system, and being truly seen becomes a biological event that calms and connects the brain.

We revisit practical lessons in neuroplasticity and resilience: small daily actions that build new habits, strategies that strengthen the prefrontal cortex, and a shift from deficits to capacity—especially important in ageing, dementia and mental health.

And we explore the powerful truth revealed again and again this year:
Community is part of our neurobiology.
Humans regulate each other. Team flow, synchrony, compassion and presence activate brain networks that cannot be accessed alone or online.

Finally, we look ahead to the future of Thriving Minds:
bringing connection neuroscience into real-world settings, designing homes, schools and workplaces aligned with what we now know about the brain, and continuing to build a bridge between science and lived experience.

If these ideas resonate, subscribe to the Thriving Minds podcast and join the growing community working toward a more hopeful, brain-wise future.

We change our brains—and each other’s—every day.
The opportunity for the next decade is to do it consciously, together.

#ConnectionNeuroscience #ThrivingMinds #Neuroscience2026 #BrainHealth #HumanConnection #InterbrainSynchrony #Neuroplasticity #CollectiveIntelligence #CommunityHealing #RelationalNeuroscience

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