12th-18th May is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK, and this year’s theme is ‘community’. At the Hub for Metabolic Psychiatry, people with lived experience of severe mental illness are central to our research efforts. As active members of our research community, their insights guide our work and ensure that our approach is rooted in real-world challenges. In this blog, Hub Lived Experience Group member, Dyane Harwood, shares her powerful story of navigating postpartum bipolar disorder, finding support through peer groups, and ultimately discovering a sense of belonging within the emerging field of metabolic psychiatry.