A-Z of mental health
Information and advice on a huge range of mental health topics
Speaker biographies
Sue Baker, Portfolio Director, Time to Change
Richard Bentall, author
Peter Beresford, Professor of Social Policy, Brunel University
Sandra Carlisle, Public Health, Glasgow University
Sophie Corlett, Director of External Relations, Mind
Janet Davies, Policy Manager, Time to Change
Paul Farmer, Chief Executive, Mind
Katie Gill, Project Officer, Ecominds
Pauline Heslop, Norah Fry Research Centre, University of Bristol
Gregor Henderson, Programme Lead, Well-being, NMHDU
Jennifer Humphrey, Awards Administrator, Unltd
John Hopton, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, University of Manchester
Marion Janner, Star Ward
Marion Kemple, Policy and Campaigns Officer, MInd
Di Kitson, Local programmes officer,Time to change
Kevin Lewis, Personalisation Lead, NMHDU
Dr Liz Miller, GP
Juliet Michaelson, Project Worker/Researcher, new economics foundation
Jonathan Naess, Director, Stand to Reason
Dr Jo Nurse, National Lead for Public Mental Health and well-being, DoH
Martin O'Kane, Author and leading expert on welfare rights
Andrew Pritchard, Mind in Taunton and West Somerset
NIna Quinlan, Wellbeing Project Manager, University of Leeds
Sathnam Sanghera, Author and journalist
Dr Anthony Seldon, Political historian and Head of Wellington College
Andrew Smith
Jim Symington, Deputy Director, NMHDU
Gary Tideswell, Director of wellbeing, University of Leeds
Colin Walker, Policy and Campaigns manager, Mind
Jeff Walker, Well being Programme Lead, Mind
Barry Watts, Grants Manager, Ecominds
Sue Baker, Director
Portfolio Director, Time to change
Sue Baker is leading England's new 'Time to Change' programme aimed at ending mental health stigma and discrimination as well as improving wellbeing.
Time to Change is an ambitious £20million programme being delivered by Mind, Rethink and the Institute of Psychiatry.
She is responsible for the co-ordination and delivery of this exciting social movement in England with 35 projects across England, including a £7.5m social marketing campaign that will reach 75% of all adults in England.
Sue worked for a charity in New Zealand on the world's largest campaign to address the discrimination experienced by people with mental health problems, using human rights and mental health promotion models. She also worked for nine years as Head of Media at Mind, in particular carrying out the UK's first survey of the extent and impact of discrimination (in the mid 90s).
She has also been a Director of a leading substance misuse charity where she was responsible for marketing treatment services, delivering business growth and developing marketing and fundraising.
She lives in East Dulwich, London with her partner and enjoys photography, relaxing with nature, and the occasional game of tennis (weather permitting) and trips to the gym.
Guardian article on Sue and the origins of Time to Change
Richard Bentall, author
Richard Bentall obtained a BSc in Psychology at University College of North Wales Bangor, where he also obtained a PhD in experimental psychology in 1983. He qualified in clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool in 1984 and obtained a MA in philosophy applied to health care from University College Swansea in 1989. After briefly working as a forensic clinical psychologist in the NHS, he was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Liverpool in 1986, eventually becoming Professor of Clinical Psychology in 1994 and was appointed Professor of Experimental Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester in 1999. He is also a fellow of the British Psychological Society.
Professor Peter Beresford
Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Citizen Participation, Brunel University.
Chair, Shaping our lives.
Peter Beresford OBE is a long term user of mental health services and also chair of Shaping our lives, the national independent service user controlled organisation and network. He has a longstanding involvement in issues of participation and empowerment as writer, researcher, educator and service user. He is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Citizen Participation at Brunel University and he is a member of the Department of Health Transformation of Adult Social Care programme Board and Adult Social care Workface Strategy Board. He is a Trustee of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, member of the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Health research and a member of the Advisory Group of involve, the body set up to advise Government on public and user involvement in health, public health and social care research.
Dr Sandra Carlisle
Public Health, Glasgow University
Dr Sandra Carlisle's background lies in medical social anthropology and sociology applied to public health. She has been involved, over the years, in numerous health-related research and evaluation projects in both academic and voluntary sector settings. She joined the Public Health Section of Glasgow University in February 2006 to work on a six year research project investigating the influence of 'modern culture' on mental health and wellbeing. Long standing research interests include: sociological and anthropological approaches to understanding health, wellbeing and social inequalities; community development and partnership work; community participation in action research; and ethnographic and theory-focused methodologies applied to research and evaluation.
Sophie Corlett
Director of External Relations, Mind
Sophie Corlett is Director of External Relations at Mind. She is responsible for Mind's policy and campaigning, media, communications, legal and information services work. She has been at Mind since 2002. She also oversees two of the main national projects feeding into the four year anti-stigma campaign, Time to Change:Time to Challenge, which has a particular focus on employment and Get Moving. Sophie sits on several national committees and boards representing Mind's views on various issues, and is a regular spokesperson for Mind in the media.
Janet Davies
Policy Manager, Time to change
Janet has been seconded from the Department of Health to Time to Change since October 2008. Her role at Time to Change, the ambitious programme to end discrimination faced by people who experience mental health problems, includes helping to embed Time to Change's aims and activities into national government strategies and initiatives - particularly New Horizons, the Government's review of mental health in England.
Janet was part of the team that developed the Mental Health National Service Framework , which set out the government's national policy for mental health care and services. Janet has also led a number of national and regional policy and implementation initiatives, including: Delivering Race Equality; the Women's Mental Health Strategy; the national Mental Health Risk Programme and the Care Programme Approach (CPA) review.
Paul Farmer
Chief Executive, Mind
Paul Farmer has been Chief Executive of Mind, the leading mental health charity working in England and Wales since May 2006.
Paul is a member of a number of groups, including Lord Darzi's Review of Primary Care, the DWP/ACEVO task force on Welfare Reform, and the DH National Stakeholder Forum.
Before becoming Chief Executive of Mind, Paul was Director of Public Affairs for Rethink and was Chair of the Mental Health Alliance from 2001-2006.
Paul is a trustee for the Directory of Social Change, a campaigning voluntary organisation that provides the sector with training and publications and the Mental Health Providers Forum, an umbrella body for voluntary organisations supporting people with mental distress.
Katie Gill
Project Officer, Ecominds
Katie Gill has been working on the Ecominds grant scheme with Mind for over two years and is responsible for all internal and external communications including the annual networking event.
Gregor Henderson,
Programme Lead, Well-being and Population Mental Health, National Mental Health Development Unit.
Gregor Henderson works for the National Mental Health Development Unit as Programme Lead for well being and Population Mental Health. Gregor was previously the first Director of Scotland's innovative and now internationally renowned National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Wellbeing from April 2003 to March 2008. Gregor has also worked as Director of the Scottish Development Centre for Mental health and was a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. Gregor's main interests are in combining policy, research evidence and practice in transforming the way people, communities and societies think and act about mental health.
Dr Pauline Heslop
Dr Pauline Heslop has a background of working with children and young people in a variety of settings in the UK and overseas.
For the last ten years, Pauline has been based at the Norah Fry Research Centre, part of the University of Bristol, where she is now a Senior Research Fellow. The main focus of the Norah Fry Research Centre is research on issues affecting the lives of disabled people, and it is one of the leading centres in the UK for research into services for people with learning disabilities.
Pauline has been using Direct Payments since 1999 to support her own mental health needs. Within this time she has built up a range of experience in making Direct Payments work for her. She is the author of the booklet ‘Direct Payments for Mental Health Users’ produced by the National Centre for Independent Living (NCIL).
John Hopton
Senior Lecturer in Social work, University of Manchester
John Hopton has worked as a mental health nurse from 1975 until 1984 and apart from one year spent as a staff development officer in the NHS during the early 1990s he worked in nurse education from 1984 to 1995. Since 1995 he has been a lecturer on social work programmes at University of Manchester. He has written and published widely about a range of mental health issues
Jennifer Humphrey
Awards Administrator
UnLtd
I have worked for UnLtd for over a year now, and I am delighted to work in an organisation where I can see real social change happening because of the inspiring individuals I meet on a day to day basis. My role is as Awards Administrator so I support social entrepreneurs from the very beginning of their journeys while making initial applications. I also organise and run outreach, training and celebration events. I am currently involved with award winners working on projects varying from a train club for children with Autism to multicultural celebration events for ethnic minorities in Bedford and all sorts of others in between. In a former life I taught English to teenagers in France and so I now find it very refreshing to work with really proactive people rather than those dragging their feet into a classroom. However the role heightened my love of teaching, croissants and coffee!
Marion Janner
Star Wards
Marion Janner is best known for being the little person at the end of the lead attached to the legendary Buddy (a Tibetan terrier. Not that other legendary Buddy). When not performing this duty for her support dog, Marion runs the Star Wards project and its parent charity, Bright. Star Wards works with mental health wards to improve patients' daily experiences and treatment outcomes. Marion's favourite TV programme is Pimp Your Ride and she has exciting plans to fluff up her Ka.
Marion Kemple
Policy and Campaigns Officer
Mariam is a Policy and Campaigns Officer from Mind the leading mental health charity. She works in the Mental Health Services team and her areas include: men and mental health, the regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors, prescription charges and New Horizons (the next ten year strategy for mental health).
Di Kitson
Local programmes officer, Time to change
Di Kitson is Local Programmes Officer for theTime to Change programme. Her role involves ensuring that the Time to Change local projects which are primarily concerned with physical activity link to the main thrust of the Time to Change portfolio which is about ending discrimination. The local projects are run by LMAs and Rethink.
Dianes background is mental health nursing and she has worked for Rethink and as a senior operations manager for Solent Mind, a large LMA.
Kevin Lewis
Personalisation Lead
National Mental Health Development Unit
Kevin joined the NHS in 1981 via the Graduate Management Programme and after a couple of years in teaching hospitals discovered mental health and learning disability services. He spent most of the 80s and 90s closing long-stay hospitals and developing more appropriate alternatives. A study tour to the USA in the mid 90s led him to leave the NHS to set up a not for profit company to build holistic support to meet the needs and dreams of people with historically challenging reputations. Hands-on experience of lives changing dramatically led him back into policy development and change management and he now leads the personalisation programme for the National Mental Health Development Unit (NMHDU). 'Seen through the lens of personalisation, all public services will evolve to a radically different offering'.
Dr Liz Miller
Dr Liz Miller qualified as a doctor, worked as a neurosurgeon for six years, developed bipolar disorder, and although unable to continue as a neurosurgeon has continued to work as a doctor. She now works largely in occupational Health. In 2008 she was voted Mind Mental Health Champion for her work setting up the Doctors Support Network and continues to campaign actively to reduce the stigma of mental ill health. She has recently written a book Mood Mapping and is a Trustee of Stand to Reason, a campaigning group to reduce stigma and discrimination within the work place.
Juliet Michaelson
Project Manager, new economics foundation
Juliet Michaelson is a Project Manager / Researcher at the centre for well-being, nef (the new economics foundation), an independent think-and-do tank which aims to improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions which challenge mainstream thinking on economics, environmental and social issues to put people and the planet first. Juliet works on a number of projects which consider well-being as a measure of progress and its implications for policy, including work on National Accounts of Well-being and the Happy Planet Index. She has recently been involved in nef’s work as secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics, established earlier this year.
Jonathan Naess
Director, Stand to Reason
After studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, Jonathan has enjoyed an uninterrupted twelve year career in three different but related positions in the city, despite having suffered from serious mental illness since his early twenties. He trained and practised as a corporate finance lawyer at international law firm Watson, Farley and Williams, then became Senior Manager of regulation at the London Stock Exchange plc’s AIM market, before joining Nabarro Wells & Co Limited, a corporate finance advisory house, where he was an equity partner and director.
Jonathan founded Stand to Reason in April 2007 having taken a year’s sabbatical from Nabarro Wells, and is now the first Director of the organisation. Stand to Reason has already attracted over 2,000 members, many of whom hold responsible and leading positions in all sectors of our society. By taking a positive and creative approach, Stand to Reason hopes to engage with people who to date have not been engaged in tackling mental health stigma and discrimination.
Jonathan advised the DH and DWP on the National Mental Health and Employment Strategy Steering Group chaired by Dame Carol Black. He is also a Visiting Research Associate at the Institute of Psychiatry, a trustee of the Mosaic Clubhouse of the ICCD – a psycho-social rehabilitation project in Balham, and has been an external member of the Charitable Funds for the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. He is both a trustee nationally and an active member of MDF the Bipolar Organisation locally in Twickenham.
Jonathan was awarded the Radar Human Rights Person of the Year Award in 2008 for his work at Stand to Reason.
Dr Jo Nurse
National Lead for Public Mental Health and well-being at the Department of Health
A Consultant in Public Health and an honorary lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Jo has a varied background in psychiatry, general practice and clinical work in sexual health.
She has worked at the WHO and advised the DH nationally on violence and abuse prevention since 2003. She has worked as a public health consultant since 2003, with experience at local, regional, national and international levels. Since 2006, she has had responsibility for the national lead role on excess winter and summer deaths. This has involved addressing fuel poverty, responsibility for the national Heatwave plan and the development of DH guidance on climate change and health.
At the start of 2008, Jo took the national lead on Public Mental Health and Well-Being, working to develop a well-being framework and to promote leadership in public mental health, as well as working across Government departments to influence policy to promote well-being.
Martin O'Kane
Author and leading expert on welfare rights
Martin currently divides his time between managing a Mental Health and Welfare Rights service at Chesterfield Community Mental Health Services and acting as Service User Involvement and Training Officer with Derbyshire 'Supporting People'. His Supporting People remit involves developing a strategy to involve service users in housing related support services in Derbyshire. Both jobs focus upon accommodation and income issues for people who use a variety of statutory and independent support services in Derbyshire.
Martin has presented at many of Mind's national conferences over recent years, primarily on issues relating to welfare rights for people who experience mental health problems and is the regular author on welfare updates to the Openmind magazine. He is joint author with Ann Davis and Alex Davis at the University of Birmingham of, 'Claiming Disability Living Allowance - an information pack for people using mental health services, their Carers and Advocates' which can be downloaded at the address below.
In July 2007 he wrote the 'Managing on Benefits' booklet, a practical guide for people with mental health problems, for Mind. He has also taught at the Universities of Sheffield and Birmingham on these issues.
Andrew Pritchard
Mindline Somerset Manager and Deputy Chief Executive of Mind in Taunton and West Somerset
Andrew currently manages Mindline Somerset an out of hours mental health helpline supporting the community of Somerset. He does this alongside being the deputy CEO for the local Mind Association in Taunton and West Somerset, which Mindline Somerset is a project.
Prior to this he worked at Westminster Mind with both a drop-in project and befriending services. His interest in financial capability started with work in London and he has continued to be involved in Mind's joint work with the Financial Services Authority on delivering Financial Capability training to local Mind staff and service users.
Andrew lives in his native Somerset with wife and daughter, enjoying the rural life!
Nina Quinlan
Wellbeing Project Manager, University of Leeds
Nina Quinlan has worked at the University of Leeds since September 2007 as Wellbeing Project Manager. With a remit to promote organisational wellbeing, she manages the wellbeing support services for staff at the University, including a legal advice helpline; as a qualified mediator she runs an in-house mediation service, and a staff counselling service. Her current activities are focussed towards building mental resilience within the workplace. In addition, she runs wellbeing projects aimed at the 8,000 staff at the University, including an annual Healthy Week, a Staff Festival and has recently co-ordinated a successful external funding bid to explore cross University staff wellbeing. With an academic background in public health, her specialism is organisational wellbeing and this supports her work writing healthy and supportive employment policies. Prior to this, Nina worked at one of the UK's largest Further and Higher Education institutions - Bradford College - and introduced the 'Healthy College Standard'. Her previous career as a Lecturer and Course Leader in Health and Social Welfare has given her a broad perspective on health inequalities for disadvantaged groups. Nina is currently a member of the Yorkshire and Humber Teaching Public Health Network, and is working collaboratively to explore ways of engaging employers, within and outside the University sector, in staff wellbeing.
Nina Quinlan, BSc (Hons) Health Studies, PGCE, MSc Public Health (Health Promotion)
Sathnam Sanghera
Author and journalist
Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands in 1976, attended Wolverhampton Grammar School and graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998. His first book, The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, published by Penguin, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Biography Award, the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize and named 2009 Mind Book of the Year.
Before becoming a writer Sathnam (among other things) worked at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York. Between 1998 and 2006 he was at The Financial Times, where he worked (variously) as a news reporter in the UK and the US, specialised in writing about the media industries, worked across the paper as Chief Feature Writer, and wrote a weekly column.
Sathnam joined The Times in 2007. He has won numerous prizes for his journalism, including Article of the Year in the 2005 Management Today Writing Awards, Newspaper Feature of the Year in the 2005 Workworld Media Awards, HR Journalist of the Year in the 2006 and 2009 Watson Wyatt Awards for Excellence and the accolade of Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002. He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters for services to journalism by The University of Wolverhampton in September 2009.
Dr Anthony Seldon
Political historian and Head of Wellington College
Dr Anthony Seldon is a political historian and commentator on British political leadership as well as on education and contemporary Britain. He is also Master (headmaster) of Wellington College, one of the country's most famous and historic independent schools and was co-founder and first Director of the Institute of Contemporary British History. He is also author or editor of some 25 books.
Pru Sly,
Mind Workplace Lead, Mind
Andrew Smith
Andy Smith had accessed services in Hertfordshire for over twenty years. For much of that time his life seemed to be one of frustration and lack of opportunity.
This all changed when he moved into independent housing and started to get direct payments. Over the last three years he has workedfor Essex Coalition of Disabled People and the National Centre for Independent Living on a consultancy basis. This led to the opportunity to do a postgraduate qualification in Disability Equality at Anglia Ruskin University, using direct payments to fund my transport.
Now a Champion for Mental Health Personalisation, significant progress for someone who was a patient in a proper asylum at one stage!
A former Governor of a Foundation Trust, a heavy rock fan, football and cricket fanatic too!
Jim Symington
Deputy Director, National Mental Health Development Unit
Jim Symington works for the NMHDU. He leads the 'Improving Mental Health care Pathways' national programme and the units partnerships with other organisation s in support of mental health policy development and implementation in England. NMHDU which launched in April 2009 consists of a small central team and a range of programmes funded by both the Department of Health and the NHS to provide national support for implementing mental health policy by advising on national and international best practice to improve mental health and mental health services. It does this by commissioning or providing; specialist expertise in priority areas of policy and delivery' effective knowledge transfer on research, evidence and good practice; translation of national policies into practical deliverables that achieve outcomes' and coordination of national activity to help regional and local implementation. Previously Jim worked on a number of regional and national programmes, in commissioning and as a provider of NHS and third sector mental health services. Before joining the NHS, Jim was an approve Social Worker and Manager in Social care.
Alex Tambouridies
Mind Workplace Lead, Director of Hammersmith and Fulham Mind
Gary Tideswell, Leeds University
Gary Tideswell was the Higher Education sector's first Director of Wellbeing, Safety and Health appointed in September 2006. A graduate in environmental health, he gained an MSc in Occupational Health Sciences from the University of Manchester in 1993 and a Masters in Law from Leeds Metropolitan University in 2004.
Moving from local authority positions into higher education, Gary previously held the posts of Head of Health, Safety and Environment at the University of Central Lancashire and Director of Health and Safety at the University of York before coming to Leeds.
During his time at Leeds, Gary has been director of the very successful 'Creating Success Through Wellbeing in Higher Education' project, leading the bid process and overseeing project delivery. A second bid has lead to a further two year project looking at performance improvement through staff engagement and wellbeing. This phase two project will run from October 2009.
Colin Walker
Policy and Campaigns Manager, Mind
Colin Walker is Policy and Campaigns Manager at Mind, responsible for the organisation's work to improve the provision of mental health services within England and Wales. Colin works on a wide range of issues, including acute and crisis care, mental well-being, men and mental health, the provision and safety of medicines, and the availability and regulation of psychological therapies. Colin's background is as a political campaigner, having previously worked at Which?, the British Library and the law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary.
Jeff Walker
Wellbeing Programme Manager, Mind
Jeff Walker has worked for Mind as Wellbeing Programme Manager since May 2008. Before starting with Mind, Jeff was Director of Bristol Mind. Jeff has personal experience of using secondary mental health service and has been active in the service user community since 2001. He has held the position of Chair with the North Bristol and Southmead User Network and the Avon wide Service User Reference Group. Whilst Jeff's job with Mind takes him out of Bristol for much of his working week, he still maintains his contact with the Bristol service user community.
Barry Watts
Grants Manager, Ecominds
Barry Watts is the Manager of the Grants Unit and manages a team of 5 people, supporting a variety of funding schemes, including Ecominds, Opportunities for Volunteering, the local Mind association Fund, the Reserve Fund and Grants for Carers. The Grants Unit supports a number of grant panels and independent assessors who ensure funding decisions are fair. Collectively these funds allocate over £1.5M pa.