MINDS: Listening cafes to explore the lived experience of mental health, neurodiversity and trans+ identities.

Lead Applicants: Hannah Bowers & Kate Henaghan-Sykes

Lead Member: Southampton

Some people are neurodivergent. This means their brain works differently, for example, if they are autistic or have ADHD.

Some people are trans+. This includes non-binary, transgender, genderfluid, questioning and other gender identities.

There is an overlap between these two groups with some people being both neurodivergent and trans+. Neurodivergent people are more likely to identify as trans+ and trans+ people are more likely to identify as neurodivergent compared to the general population.  The term NeuroQueer is a term used by some within this community identify themselves.  We will use the word NeuroQueer in this project. 

We know:

Neurodivergent people often have mental health difficulties.

Trans+ people often have mental health difficulties.

But, there has not been much research about the mental health of NeuroQueer people.

Our existing project is called MINDS and it it looks at mental health in autistic and ADHD adults. We want to work with NeuroQueer people to make sure our research includes them.

Aims

We would like to conduct Listening Cafes with adults who identify as both neurodivergent and trans+ to

 (1) find out more about their experiences of mental health difficulties in primary care and

 (2) work together to make sure our research is inclusive and addresses issues that are important to this group.

Approach:

We would like to work with Beyond Reflections (a charity for trans+ people and their families) to conduct five Listening Cafes with five NeuroQueer adults.  Listening Cafés will be two-hour, in-person meetings, held in a safer space with food, craft and games. We will have informal discussions at these Listening Cafes about mental health in primary care and our research plans in the MINDS studies.

Proposed timelines:

We would like to do these Listening Cafes from January 2026 to December 2026 so that they run alongside our other projects. We would set up the cafes in month 1 (January), have our first café in month 2 (February), then the remaining cafes would be held every 2-3 months (April, July, September, November). The report would be prepared and learnings shared in December 2026. We would time these so they line up with our key research activities. This is so the cafes can directly affect our research plans.

Amount: £2,137.50