A 2025 End-of-Year Reflection on The ASPIRE Study: Lived Experience Perspective
By Fanni-Laura Mäntylä
Work package 7 Lead and Expert by Experience
My history with depression started around the 2010s. After secondary education, I proceeded to work-life, and quite quickly was given more responsibilities and tasks. I pursued, I succeeded, I thrived – and I burned out. All of a sudden, I was incapable of working or even managing daily life.
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I lost contact with many and sank into a sinking feeling. It took nearly a decade of baby steps and trial and error, treatment after treatment. But as I approached the 2020s, I re-entered employment with a unique stance of professional and personal expertise, tied with a community understanding—and more importantly, with an outlook on life I wouldn’t have gained in any other way. Would I do it all again if I had the chance? Such a hard question, but luckily: easy to leave it unanswered, as it’s impossible. Now that I’ve gone through what I did, however, I feel I owe it to myself — and others — to make the most of it.
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The ASPIRE Study began 18 months ago. The project is co-designed and co-led with people with lived experience (PWLE). Collaboration among academia, clinicians, and PWLE is at the core of the project, incorporated in the study design.
Last spring, after a shout-out on social media shared by patient-led organisations and partners of the project, GAMIAN-Europe and SADAG, we received an outstanding number of applications to join the PWLE Advisory Board. Ten individuals were selected, keeping in mind diversity in all aspects.The Board meets quarterly, and communication between researchers and PWLE Advisory Board members has been designed to be as accessible and as low-barrier as possible, with specific liaison meetings around every board meeting
In the second half of 2025, we also kicked off with focus groups. So far, we’ve held two focus group meetings with PWLE, and we will continue in the next years to hold focus group meetings also with professionals and mixed around themes of depression and inflammation. Please follow-us on social media as we share updates.
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Image source: Fanni-Laura Mäntylä
Image source: Fanni-Laura Mäntylä
As a person with lived experience both from depression but also from working as an Expert by Experience in research, I value the commitment the ASPIRE Study has shown to having people with lived experience as equal stakeholders and mutual decision-makers. And I trust you; this is not a light thing to say. Having seen a lot and now having this chance to make an impact – there’s a lot to guard.
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“Detours, too, are part of the path.” ​
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Fanni-Laura Mäntylä
Work package leader and Expert by Experience
People with Lived Experience (PWLE) and Dissemination
The ASPIRE Study