Dr Donal O’Keeffe

Donal blends professional expertise (Academic Psychology and Service Management) with lived experience leadership to promote mental health recovery, translate policy, drive service reform, and enhance research impact.

As Manager of ARCHES Recovery College, he leads a team of people with lived experience and, together with mental health professionals, uses adult learning principles to foster empowerment, promote belonging, and help people understand and manage distress. Donal and the ARCHES team bridge research, policy, and practice—championing inclusion, autonomy, positive risk-taking, and human rights in mental health services.

In his work with ARCHES Recovery College, Donal uses participatory and co-design principles to develop and deliver our theoretically grounded and evidence informed Recovery Education programme. He views mental health as a human right and is passionate about driving mental health service reform so that service user, family member, carer, and supporter perspectives are prioritised. Donal advocates for a value based mental health system centred on justice, equality, respect, and compassion.

Donal also sits on the Editorial Board of the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine and serves as Public & Patient Involvement Lead for the €2.5M Health Research Board funded VISTA mental health research programme; ensuring lived experience and general public voices shape its direction. His research focuses on co-designing solutions that illuminate pathways to mental health recovery and transform health systems globally.

You can read some of it here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Donal-Okeeffe

Areas of expertise: Psychology, the Recovery Approach, Public & Patient Involvement in research, Meaning in Life, curriculum design.