Imperfect Cognitions

This is the last in a series of posts reporting outcomes from a project on Agency in Youth Mental Health, led by Rose McCabe at City University. Today, Rachel Temple , Public Involvement in Research Manager at the McPin Foundation , and members of the Young Person Advisory Group [YPAG] tell us about how the project impacted them.  In the course of the project, YPAG members provided detailed feedback on the application for funding, shaping research questions and outputs; contributed to the research, analysing videos of interactions between practitioners and young people struggling with their mental health; participated in public engagement events and prepared resources for schools on agency and youth mental health; shared their valuable insights, knowledge, and experience on blog posts and podcasts; and co-authored some of the project publications with the other members of the team.    Prior to working on the Agency project, I held a lot of shame and secrecy around my me...

This is part of a series of posts reporting outcomes from a project on Agency in Youth Mental Health, led by Rose McCabe at City University. In the previous post , the project team provided some evidence of epistemic injustice in clinical encounters. Today, Clara Bergen  and Lisa Bortolotti discuss a new approach to protecting the sense of agency of young people meeting a crisis team for mental health problems. Clara Bergen Lisa Bortolotti In our project, we wanted to ask: How can practitioners avoid undermining a young person’s sense of agency in a mental healthcare encounter? We adopted an absolutely unique analytic approach to find out the answer. “We” are a group of six experts in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, clinical communication, clinical practice, and public involvement in research (Interdisciplinary Academic Researchers), and five young people aged 17-25 with experience of accessing mental health services for diagnoses including post-traumatic stress disorder, ma...

In this post, I reflect on what makes Mirabel, the leading character in the latest Disney movie, an unlikely hero. On the surface, Encanto is the usual underdog story: in a family of exceptional people, blessed with magic and superhero powers, Mirabel has no special gift and is an embarrassment in the eyes of her grandmother and her much more accomplished sister Isabela. However, it is Mirabel, with the help of another outcast, her uncle Bruno, who will save the day. To me, Encanto is about what it means to live in a society that does not acknowledge the patient, exhausting, and yet often invisible labour required in any sort of close-knit community--and often carried out by women. The weight of expectations suffocates the individuality of the members of the Madrigal family and takes the joy out of their lives. Such expectations are driven by labels that, once attached, are stuck to their owners: the strong and dependable Luisa; the “golden child”, perfect Isabela; the “weir...

This post is the sixth in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. Today a member of Young People's Advisory Group writes her reflections about the project and what it means to her.  The author is Catherine Fadashe, who is currently a third-year student at Birkbeck University studying English Literature and Italian. Her interests within mental health focuses on how to de-stigmatize culturally-influenced perceptions of mental health within Africa. In 2019, I delivered a TEDx talk speaking on my mental health journey since my suicide attempt when I was 18. Talking about something so personal on a public platform, and being so open and honest about the topic, gave me a huge sense of liberation. So when I came across the opportunity to be on the Young People’s Advisory Group (YPAG) for the McPin Agency pr...

This post is the fifth in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. Today it is my turn ( Lisa Bortolotti ) to answer four questions about the project.  I am Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, affiliated with the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Mental Health. I am a philosopher of psychology, interested in belief, rationality, self-knowledge, and mental health.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? The encounter between a mental healthcare practitioner and a young person experiencing a mental health crisis is the paradigmatic case of an interaction characterised by power imbalances: the practitioner is an expert who can assess risks and prescribe treatment, whereas the young person is thought of as a vulnerable...

This post is the fourth in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Michael Larkin's turn to answer. Michael Larkin Michael is a Reader in Psychology at Aston University. He is interested in related and connectedness and is an expert in the co-production and co-design of psychosocial services. In 2019, he was awarded the Mid-Career Research Prize by the Qualitative Methods Section of the British Psychological Society. What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? Over the years I’ve been involved in lots of studies about people’s experiences of mental health services, and of course, read a lot of other’s people’s work in this area too. It’s really striking how frequently certain key themes...

Matthew Broome This post is the second in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Matthew Broome's turn to answer. Matthew is an academic psychiatrist and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham. His main research interests lie in the field early psychosis and in the philosophy and ethics of mental health.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? There were two main drivers to my interest. One is very practical: as a psychiatrist I often see young people with mental health problems and am aware of the difficulties they can face in getting the help and understanding they would like.  The second driver is more theoretical, but with p...

Rachel Temple This post is first in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Rachel Temple's turn to answer. Rachel is a Public Involvement & Research Manager at the mental health research charity, The McPin Foundation . At The McPin Foundation, she leads the McPin’s Young People Advisory Group and the wider young people’s network . She is passionate about ensuring meaningful involvement of young people in mental health research in ways that are comfortable, accessible, and engaging; regularly drawing from her social anxiety experiences when facilitating.  Rachel is responsible for ensuring that no key decisions are made without consulting with the young people on this project; seeking their input on things such as project aims, des...

In this post I reflect on what the Disney film Frozen can tell us about youth mental health. (This is a slightly expanded version of a post that appeared on the University of Birmingham website on 16th December 2019.) When it was released in 2013, Frozen was praised for having a leading female character who was different: a guest at Elsa’s coronation calls her a monster when she loses control; Elsa isolates herself from the people she loves for fear of harming them; and she is distressed because she does not fully comprehend what is happening to her. Elsa does not ‘fit in’, and often makes those around her feel uncomfortable. When Elsa celebrates her liberation from her stuffy conventional life with the song “Let it go”, some critics talked about Disney’s ‘gay agenda’ and Elsa was welcomed in some circles as a queer icon. Some were hoping that she would get a girlfriend in Frozen II . But there is another form of diversity that Elsa embodies just as convincingly, that...

In today's post we announce two events celebrating the work of project PERFECT, both to be held later this month. Both events are part of the Arts and Science Festival at the University of Birmingham. PERFECT hosted three academic workshops, one on belief in 2016, one on memory in 2017, and one on confabulation in 2018. In 2019 we want to see whether some core themes of the project can be conveyed to a wider public via the means of artistic expression. We have planned the screening of a film, Mani Rosse (Red Hands) by Francesco Filippi ; and an art exhibition entitled Pouring Water Through a Telescope in collaboration with the Art Recovery Group at the Barber Institute . Both events celebrate the role of imagination in promoting growth and healing. Both events explore the importance of personal relationships in wellbeing and success. RED HANDS  Film screening Where: Midlands Arts Centre , Birmingham  When: 18th June, doors open at 6pm. For whom: All ...