Imperfect Cognitions

This post is the third 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 Rose McCabe's turn to answer. Rose McCabe Rose is a psychologist specialising in professional-patient communication in mental health care. She records professional-patient encounters and micro-analyses verbal and nonverbal communication. She also works on translating these findings into novel interventions to improve communication and patient outcomes in mental healthcare.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? I am fascinated by communication between people and how it has the potential to impact us in a good or bad way. In a mental health context, when someone is distressed and vulnerable, this becomes even m...

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...

Today's post is by Dan Reardon who is currently an MSc student at the Institute for Mental Health , University of Birmingham. Dan is a medical doctor and an entrepreneur who has founded multiple fitness and nutrition companies, including venture capital funded FitnessGenes. He has been featured in InStyle, The New York Times, Men’s Fitness, Inc, Well+Good, Livestrong and on Fox News, ABC News, Inside Edition, Today, BBC News, and “The Doctors.” Dan has a keen interest in the demedicalization of young people, digital wellbeing and resilience. Dan Reardon I have a long-held belief that mental illness is far from something that is “real” in the disease sense, and yet the rate of growth of mental disorders, both the number of potential diagnoses (described by Foucault as being an invention of 19th century reformers), and the number of people suffering, is exponential. I’ve read countless accounts of mental illness being a choice of those that “suffer”, but I’ve realised the statement ...

On 5th June, the Royal Society for Medicine hosted a workshop to explore the some of the issues - particularly the practicalities surrounding mental health interventions in schools. The event brought together medical and educational professionals and provided a forum to discuss ongoing projects supporting young people’s mental health, difficulties and potential courses of action for improvement. In the following, I summarise some of the talks. Lord Richard Layard , Director of the Wellbeing Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance , London School of Economics, discussed the idea of schools having wellbeing as an explicit goal. The next step is to have as many schools as possible measuring progress towards this goal. Richard proposed that one way to do this is through a wellbeing code debated on by children, teachers, parents, (every 2 years) regarding how people relate to each other in classrooms, assemblies, the playground, and so on. Such a code would cover no...

Today's post is by Francesco Filippi (pictured below), an Italian director, screenwriter, and animator whose work can be found here . In this post he tells us about his new film, Red Hands, which addresses the theme of domestic violence. Can an animated film for teenagers have something to say to the readers of this very interesting blog which explores the boundaries of the human mind? Red Hands , an Italian 30' long film in stop-motion and 2D animation, had his premiere at the Rome Film Festival on October 20th, 2018. As you can see from the trailer  above, it's a story of domestic abuse. Ernesto, a 12 year-old boy, discovers that the magnificent red graffiti appeared on the walls of his street are made by Luna, a girl with a mysterious power. She can emit a blood-like liquid from her hands, but her power is a side-effect of her father's violence at home.

In today's post Kathy Puddifoot interviews Matthew Broome, Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, on the new Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham that he directs.  KP: Can you tell me about the make-up of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham? MB: The Institute for Mental Health (IMH) is a cross-college Institute at the University of Birmingham. It is housed within the School of Psychology and the College Life and Environmental Sciences , but the Institute will also include colleagues from the College of Social Sciences , of Arts and Law , and Medical and Dental Sciences . We are hoping that staff at the IMH will have affiliations with each of these groups and represent a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. In terms of appointments, we will have colleagues appointed at different grades, from professor to lecturer, as joint appointment with the Colleges linked to the IMH. Appoin...

This post is by Katharine Chisholm (pictured above), Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. In this post she discusses the study she and colleagues conducted of mental health education for young people, published in their paper  ' Impact of contact on adolescents' mental health literacy and stigma: the SchoolSpace Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial ' published in BMJ Open.  Educating young people about mental health and ill-health is important. Mental disorders impact young people disproportionally, with around two thirds of mental illnesses having their onset prior to the age of twenty-five. Young people also tend to have a relatively poor understanding of what mental illness is, and with a lack of mental health education in schools, young people report relying on popular media or cult images to gain an understanding of what mental illness might look like. These representations tend to be sensationalist at best and wi...

Today's post is by Michael Larkin , Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Birmingham and co-investigator in project PERFECT. Michael talks about his research interests for this second year of the project, and focuses on shared experience and parity of esteem . My colleague Lisa Bortolotti has written recently about Project PERFECT , and the importance of understanding those aspects of human cognition which are common to both those who seek support from mental health services and those who do not. Lisa’s conceptual work illuminates some of the ways in which, at times, we all may hold beliefs which are difficult for others to share, or act upon reasoning which is difficult for others to understand. Yesterday, I spent a fascinating morning with two clinical psychologists and a group of trainee clinical psychologists, exploring some of the differences and commonalities between ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’ in our research and practice. We discussed how the task f...