The Reach Collective is a research group directed by Dr Gerald Jordan that seeks to understand how people experiencing serious mental health challenges can build meaningful, connected, and fulfilling lives. Working alongside people with lived experience, community organisations, mental health services, students, and international research partners, the Collective develops and applies humanistic, participatory, and socioecological approaches to mental health research.
A central focus of our work isunderstanding strengths-based and meaning-centred approaches to mental health. We study experiences such as posttraumatic growth, compassion, recovery, meaning-making, generativity, citizenship, belonging, and social connection, with particular interest in psychosis and other often destabilising mental health conditions. Rather than understanding mental health outcomes solely in terms of symptoms and individual vulnerabilities, our research examines how relationships, communities, services, opportunities, and wider social conditions can enable—or constrain—people’s capacity to recover and flourish.
Our research also examines the social, political, and economic conditions that shape mental health and recovery, including social exclusion, stigma, inequality, and intergenerational injustice. Through this work, we seek to understand not only how individuals can adapt to adversity, but how communities, services, and systems can change to create environments in which people can thrive.
Reach Collective 