Authors

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:…

Emmy van Deurzen is an existential psychotherapist, philosopher and counselling psychologist. She is Principal of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling at the Existential Academy in London and runs her own private therapy practice, Dilemma Consultancy, in London. She is a Visiting Professor with Middlesex University, for whom she…

Ani de la Prida is a psychotherapist, creative arts counsellor and supervisor. She has 20 years’ experience working with groups, adults, children and young people in a range of settings. She currently has a small private practice and is on the Executive Committee of the Private Practice division of the…

Kate Smith qualified as a pluralistic therapist in 2009 and currently heads the Division of Health Sciences at Abertay University, the original home of pluralistic therapy training. Kate obtained her first and master’s degrees at Cambridge University and went on to complete her doctoral research at the University of…