Authors

Catherine Mills has worked as Service User and Carer Lead with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust since 2012, where she is responsible for the engagement and involvement of service users and carers across Merseyside. Originally she was involved with the trust as a service user. Her current role includes research, where…

Mick McKeown is Professor of Democratic Mental Health, School of Nursing, University of Central Lancashire and a trade union activist with UNISON, playing a role in union strategising on professional nursing. He has published widely in the mental health field, including co-editing the recent textbook, Essentials of Mental Health Nursing. …

Pamela Fisher is an independent researcher. Until May 2019, she was a Reader in Social & Health Citizenship at Leeds Beckett University, having previously held academic posts at the universities of Sheffield, Huddersfield, Liverpool and Leeds. Her work offers critical sociological perspectives on resilience, wellbeing and mental health, particularly from the…

Don Bryant was formerly a bank manager, set up a management training company with diverse clients across north-west England, joined Imagine, a Liverpool-based mental health charity, established an educational, training and employment centre for recovering drug users, and then became ill with severe depression in 2008. Since 2009 he has acted in…

Julian Raffay was working as Specialist Chaplain (Research, Education and Development) until his post at Mersey Care was cut in March 2020. Since then, he has completed his professional doctorate on the relationship between mental health services and faith communities with particular emphasis on the ethics of coproduction. He returned briefly…

Jodie Paget is a BABCP accredited practitioner, trainer and supervisor. She has worked as a lecturer and supervisor at the University of East Anglia. She currently has a private practice in Norfolk and is co-director and clinical lead of a mental health charity in Norfolk.

Isla Parker is a pen name. Isla is a freelance editor and writer who promotes the understanding of health issues and wellbeing. She undertook a degree in English and found it interesting to study how literature explores illness. This led to Isla writing a novel about anorexia for teenagers called…

Mark Hopfenbeck is social anthropologist specialising in health and social policy, an assistant professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), visiting fellow at London South Bank University (LSBU) and individual partner at the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine’s…

Dr Joachim Schnackenberg is a UK-trained mental health nurse and Germany-trained social worker with experience of applying the Maastricht Hearing Voices Approach in acute and community settings. He is Director of Hearing Voices and Recovery at a Northern German mental health service provider (Diakonie Kropp). He has been part…

Divine Charura is professor of counselling psychology and programme director for the doctorate in counselling psychology at York St John University. He is a chartered counselling psychologist and registered psychotherapist and has co-authored and edited numerous books in counselling and psychotherapy. His two latest co-edited books are Love and Therapy:…