The irrepressible Dr Jim Turner (Dr James (Jim)Turner) chair of Mental Health Nurse Academics UK welcoming me to the conference last month in Oxford. Jim and Fiona Nolan (Fiona Nolan) who organised it have managed to make it truly welcoming for mental health service users like me.

One of the best things about the MHNAUK conference is the number of great research heroes that you can meet in person. For instance, Professor Alan Simpson (Alan Simpson 💙) has been a pioneer in developing patient and public involvement (PPI), and is a personal inspiration to me.

The MHNAUK conference is a great chance to hear the most exciting thinkers speak. Mick McKewon (Mick McKeown), prof of democratic healthcare and another personal hero, delivered a dissection of the ‘bullsh*tisation’ of the role of the mental health nurse in late capitalism.

Yesterday I was privileged to attend the National Institute for Health and Care Research Academy Pre-Doctoral conference in Leeds. Pictured: the fantastic Academy team: Dr Peter Thompson, who leads the Fellowship Programmes, senior programme mgrs Liz Taylor and Harriet Cox and Assma Masood from the NIHR who has

As well as delivering brilliant speeches, these senior ⁦National Institute for Health and Care Research⁩ Academy Pre-doctoral board members Professors Laura Gray and Jones as well as Dr Jamie Sergeant were present for the whole conference and were extremely approachable

Talk about impostor syndrome! These were the three incredibly accomplished three Pre-doctoral Fellows I had the honour of introducing at the conference - (from left) Kyra Edwards, Abraham Contreras and Lucy Hives. And one of them also managed to fit in being an Olympic rower 😂

Kyra has used her Fellowship to develop the fascinating field of ‘Genletics’, while Abraham is using advanced statistics to predict the risk of cardiac arrests (a subject of increasing interest to me as I get older 😂). Meanwhile Lucy is using both qual and quant research to

The mild-mannered and amazingly informative Dr David Cairns, National Institute for Health and Care Research Academy’s Dep Head of Doctoral Programmes showed great generosity in answering our many questions about the Doc Fellowship (I had to be politely asked to stop asking them because of the packed schedule

Simon Cain from Westbourne Consulting is a great ally to the ⁦National Institute for Health and Care Research⁩ Academy. With hundreds of successful ‘assists’ for academic presenters from Pre-docs to professors, he delivered the most valuable advice on presentation I’ve ever heard: less is more

Prof Laura Jones with the fabulous Faye Ambler who has been my steadying and tireless co-chair (along with Lydia) of the ⁦National Institute for Health and Care Research⁩ Pre-doctoral Network - the closest thing we have to a peer support group 😀 watch this space for details of meetings and how to join

Listening to strong, talented, nurses at the SLaM nursing conference talking about their development, support and values. Class! #SLAMNursing24

#SLAMNursing24

X hive mind: I have written a 500 word blog. What is the best place to self-publish (e.g. LinkedIn) and how do I tag it on X? Thanks 🙏 in advance 😀

Video of my heartfelt vote of thanks 🙏 to the NIHR Academy for supporting us all so magnificently during the adventure that has been our Pre-doc

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When you tell a virtual room full of people that you have serious depression and only one person checks in with you afterwards … the lesson is to ‘just reach out’ as the song says. Everyone can do it - everyone can be a healer and I guarantee it will make an enormous difference

65 years since my dad graduated from Birmingham University Medical School, I’m back there today to use my 40 years lived experience to help these brilliant mental health Masters students better understand treatment resistant depression and its corrosive variants. Although my

Just got off the phone with someone who got an OBE for personally getting dozens of people off heroin addiction, hundreds when you factor in their work with a worldwide recovery organisation. Of course that’s the hardest bit. But keeping off drugs is as important. And it’s the

One of my latest publications - coauthor of chapter in Handbook of Psych Therapies for Bipolar Disorder