Background Experiencing a stroke disrupts the expected life course and can negatively impact cognitive, emotional, and physical functioning, making it a major source of disability globally. To support recovery, individuals can seek help by sharing their experiences in peer-to-peer support communities.Objective The objective of this study was to use discourse analysis to examine how members of a peer-to-peer online support community for stroke survivors construct their understanding of the condition and use narratives to reconstruct their identity into different subject positions.Methods The study context was a private Swedish peer-to-peer online support community created and administered by middle-aged people with lived experience of stroke. Data was collected through structured protocols that captured the content of posts and comments (n = 397). The analysis has followed the principles of Laclau and Mouffes discursive framework.Results Our findings suggest that identity struggles revolve around looking ahead and negotiating normative expectations with oneself and others. We identified five subject positions: survivor, pathfinder, mentor, struggler, and outsider. These positions highlight the plurality and fluidity of post-stroke identity processes. Members often shifted between these roles based on changes in health, emotional state, or community interactions.Conclusions The diversity of subject positions demonstrates that stroke recovery is not a uniform process, emphasizing the importance of recognizing identity work as a core aspect of post-stroke adaptation. The findings highlight the need for more flexible, patient-centered services that accommodate diverse narratives, including those shaped by long-term disability, emotional trauma, and shifting life priorities.

In this paper we seek to restory what has been storied as “the problem of ADHD”. Informed by calls for a critical ADHD studies, we explore the possibilities of ADHD collective autoethnographic storytelling. Together we (en)counter narratives of ADHD. Within our collective writing space, from our ADHD/AuDHD bodyminds, we seek to re-story our ADHD/AuDHD. We map a field of critical ADHD research within social sciences and point out problems of outsider perspectives, stressing a need for insider perspectives. Our data consist of collective authoethnographic writings about ADHD. From the data we have explored our experiences of (En)Countering ADHD narratives, and a transition process which we refer to as from ”broken NT-scholars” to neurodivergent scholars, stressing the importance of ADHD:ers as independent as well as collective agents, and ADHD as epistemological standpoint within research.

BACKGROUND: Stroke and other acquired brain injuries (ABIs) can present challenging experiences for individuals, both in recovery of functions affected by visible or invisible impairments and in learning to live with the new situation. Research has shown that sharing experiences face-to-face in peer groups can be beneficial during recovery. However, there is limited knowledge about the lived experiences of people with ABI who participate in online peer-to-peer groups.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to explore the lived experiences of participating in online peer-to-peer groups for people with ABI, where participants themselves set the agenda.

METHODS: Members of 2 Facebook groups (FBGs) for people with ABI were invited to participate in this study, and 20 individuals were included (14 women and 6 men; age range 24-74 years). One FBG focused on stroke and the other on fatigue caused by ABI. One group was private, and the other group was public. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, in which participants were encouraged to describe their experiences of engaging in FBGs in detail. The interviews were conducted over telephone or Zoom and digitally recorded. The audio recordings were then transcribed verbatim, resulting in 224 pages of text, and analyzed using the empirical phenomenological psychological method.

RESULTS: The analysis presented a common meaning structure with 1 main characteristic that is, "validating self," common for all 20 participants, and 3 subcharacteristics, that is, "learning-having one's own experiences confirmed," "adjusting self-building competence and self-compassion," and "supporting others-becoming a valued lived-experience expert/authority." Together, the subcharacteristics reflected a process of validating self from newcomer to lived-experience expert or authority. In this process, members of FBGs moved from being newcomers with pronounced needs for support and to learn and to have their experiences confirmed by others with similar experiences. Thus, participants were building competence and developing self-compassion. Gradually, they assumed the role of advisors, mentors, or coaches, acknowledging their experiences and competence as valuable to others, thereby validating themselves as compassionate lived-experience experts or authorities in supporting others.

CONCLUSIONS: Participation in online peer-to-peer groups can offer unique opportunities for individuals with ABI to validate self through processes that involve learning, developing self-compassion and compassion for others, and offering support to others with similar experiences. Given that rehabilitation after an ABI is often of limited duration and that positive experiences can be achieved over time through involvement in digital peer-to-peer support, health care professionals should assist patients by providing information and directing them to digital networks for people with ABI. However, when recommending the use of online peer-to-peer support, impairments and insufficient digital competence that may complicate or prevent the use of social media should be assessed and support provided when relevant.

Background Many stroke survivors face disabilities that can have a substantial lifelong impact on both their own and their significant others' life situations. Online groups on social media can serve as forums for peer support among people sharing a common experience. However, there is limited knowledge about online peer-support groups for people living with the consequences of stroke that are initiated and managed by stroke survivors themselves.Objective The aim of this study was to explore and describe what stroke survivors and their significant others share in posts and comments in a Facebook group for stroke survivors, initiated and run by stroke survivors.Methods In this participatory, exploratory and qualitative study, three stroke survivors, engaged as co-researchers with no previous research experience, identified Facebook as an important context for sharing experiences and peer support. Data were collected by summarizing posts and comments from a Facebook group over 3 months and analyzed using the principles of inductive qualitative content analysis.Results In total, 5 categories and 11 subcategories were created. The categories Narrating About Everyday Life with the Consequences of Stroke, Dealing with the Emotional Struggle of Poststroke Life, Making Progress and Enjoying Everyday Life, Navigating Societal Services and Societal Demands and Continuing Everyday Life describe narratives, questions and requests for other members' experiences related to challenges and situations that the group's members faced post-stroke.Conclusion We conclude that there is considerable breadth in the topics and issues discussed in the online forum, reflecting that a stroke affects many areas of life for both stroke survivors and their significant others. Furthermore, online peer-to-peer support for stroke survivors have the potential to provide a context for sharing experiences and knowledge, and for developing experiential knowledge. Clinical implications are that rehabilitation professionals can inform stroke survivors about the existence of online peer-to-peer groups, include the ability to use social media in assessments of activity performance, and, if relevant, support stroke survivors' use of social media.Patient or Public Contribution Stroke survivors identified Facebook as a context for the study. They collaborated in data collection, analysis, interpretation and discussion of findings and are co-authors.

The chapter describes co-creation processes between academic and community researchers. It is based on a research project aimed at increasing knowledge about experiences of being involved and feeling a sense of belonging in society among people with acquired brain injury (ABI). The chapter is written by one of the academic researchers (who is an ADHD:er) and the community researchers (who live with the consequences of ABI) who were part of the core research group. In the chapter co-creation and reciprocal learning processes during the research project are described and reflected upon. Among the findings is that co-creation involves considering unevenly distributed and variable hermeneutical resources, as well as varying and variable needs among group members.

Within academia, there is a dual process of transmitting and producing knowledge. Research led by people with first-hand experience of what is being explored helps to reduce the epistemic injustice that occurs when people with lived experience lack influence over the research process. In this chapter, we reflect upon the limits and possibilities of ADHD-led participatory research processes. Our own autoethnographic research process is used to describe and reflect upon challenges that relate to ADHD functionality and how we might overcome these challenges. Collaboration can involve conflicting needs regarding time management, balancing energy levels, pacing, and the ability to hyperfocus. Nevertheless, intertwined experiences make it easier to relate to mutual challenges and benefit from our different strengths. We describe how ADHD-led research and ADHD writing processes can differ from a neurotypical writing process, for example handling the flow of new ideas, the need for re-thinking the definition and value of co-writing, and utilizing the group members' collective strengths to create individualized working processes within a collective writing process.

In this chapter we explore the challenges and possibilities of neurodiverse research collaboration, i.e., including researchers of different neurotypes. We come from different disciplines, from the UK and Sweden. Drawing on a collaborative autoethnographic methodology, we share our reflections about working together on a wider project exploring the meanings of neurodiversity. The process of writing this chapter broadly followed that outlined in (Jackson-Perry, D., Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, H., Kourti, M. & Annable, J.L. 2020. Sensory strangers: travels in normate sensory worlds. In Neurodiversity Studies. A New Critical Paradigm, Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, H., Chown, N., Stenning, A. (eds.). London: Routledge.): an 'iterative process' whereby data collection and analyses are intertwined. We discuss academic interpretations of "expertise" and different roles in neurodiverse research groups and relate our experiences through four different themes: Creating (an)other space: trying to do research in other ways; Nurturing interest-based research; Being in a game with no rules, being 'free in chaos' and Limits of collectivity: the matter of 'One of us'.

This paper explores young autistic adults' energy management in relation to work, leisure activities and social relationships. Energy management strategies serve as different ways for the young autistic adults to sustain their energy balance by trying to understand what increases or reduces their energy levels. In this way, energy can be understood as modes of autistic functionality where the informants' individual energy levels, the contexts in which they find themselves and the strategies they use to influence and form central parts of their everyday lives.

Background. Involving people with acquired brain injury in service development has the potential to improve service and give experience-based knowledge legitimacy. The objective of this study was to explore experiences of sharing experience-based knowledge of living with acquired brain injury with others, with a particular focus on the conditions for sharing and learning, and the legitimacy of experience-based knowledge. Materials and Methods. Using a single case study design, the processes in two groups that were part of a Swedish supportive network for people with acquired brain injury were explored. One group consisted mainly of people with acquired brain injury who authored a blog and the other group consisted of healthcare staff who produced educational material with the involvement of a person with own experience of acquired brain injury. The data consisted of forty-one collective blogs, fifteen semistructured individual interviews, and ten observations from meetings. The data were analysed by utilizing the community of practice framework and the concepts of legitimate peripheral participation and epistemic injustice. Results. The findings showed that both groups developed learning processes with a focus on everyday rehabilitation as a joint enterprise. Mutual engagement developed from doing activities together and legitimacy in the groups came from engagement in these activities. In the education group, the ambition to involve people with own experience of acquired brain injury was never realized in practice. Hence, experience-based knowledge of living with acquired brain injury never got legitimacy in the group. Conclusions. We conclude that integrating experience-based knowledge from people with own experience of acquired brain injury demands careful and deliberate planning with specific consideration to existing power asymmetries between healthcare professionals and people with own experience. Mitigating epistemic injustice and gaining legitimacy for such knowledge require that people with experience of living with acquired brain injury are recognized as knowledge producers. 

Children’s invisibility, non-participation or limited participation can be associated with social workers’ experiences of losing focus of the child in their work, while at the same time navigating organisational and legal demands where a child perspective is strongly promoted. This article sheds light on social workers’ experiences of workingwith a child perspective and with children’s participation. Six in-depth interviews were conducted with professionals from social services and ngo s and from different child welfare services in Sweden. Our findings indicate that losing focus of the child is a common phenomenon that relates to the dominance of adult-centred practice and that child-centred methods need to be developed. Social workers from NGOs described having better opportunities for working in a child-centred way. Losing focus of the child mirrors the subordinated position of child-centred practice, proving that a child perspective and children’s participation are still inadequately anchored in social work practice.