The Experience of Black Trainee Clinical Psychologists with Lived Experiences of Mental Health Problems Navigating Mental Health Support in the NHS

Background: Black trainee clinical psychologists (TCPs) with lived experience of mental health problems occupy a distinctive position within the NHS, providing and potentially receiving care within institutions shaped by structural racism. Their experiences of navigating mental health support during doctoral training remain largely undocumented. This study explores how race, professional identity, and lived experience intersect to shape help-seeking within NHS Trust-based training contexts. Methodology: Eight Black female TCPs enrolled on clinical psychology doctoral programmes in England, each with lived experience of mental health problems and who had sought or considered seeking support during training, took part in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), with interpretation informed by intersectionality and Critical Race Theory. Ethical approval was granted by the University of Hertfordshire. Findings: Analysis generated five Group Experiential Themes: (1) distress emerges through cultural silencing, delayed recognition, and cumulative pressure; (2) performing wellness and competence under racialised scrutiny; (3) training and university structures as failing to contain distress; (4) NHS and trust-based support is constructed as risky due to power, proximity, racism, and permanence; and (5) safety is pursued outside formal systems through culturally attuned care, religion, peer solidarity, and values-based recommitment. Together, they describe institutional exposure that renders formal help-seeking structurally unsafe. Implications: Findings indicate the need for genuinely independent pastoral support within training programmes, redesigned NHS pathways that decouple trainee care from professional proximity, and structural rather than representational change across the profession. Future research should include Black male-identifying and non-binary trainees and adopt longitudinal and participatory designs.