I have worked as a clinical psychologist for twenty years in the NHS in England. I am currently working in Bolton in inpatient settings and with my partner Elisabeth Svanholmer, offering training and consultancy in holistic approaches to mental health and wellbeing. My interest in holistic approaches to mental health is rooted in my own experiences of altered states of mind when I was eighteen. I was sectioned and coerced to take anti-psychotic (neuroleptic) drugs. After a year I managed to come off and stay off medication. I trained as a psychologist to promote a more balanced approach to mental health that relies less on psychotropic drugs. I am interested in helping to create alternative understandings to medical labelling and the heavy handed use of psychiatric drugs, which is still the dominant approach today. I believe everybody can flourish, grow and develop if they get the right support network around them that they are willing to invest in. The web-site will connect you with the kind of training and consultancy we offer plus past articles, interviews and other media I have taken part in. Our work is part of a wider movements in mental health that includes the hearing voices movement, community development approaches and other self help and holistic health movements.
I am not against people using psychiatric medication I just would like people to be able to make informed choices and have the chance if they so wish to try out other approaches to their mental health problems (alongside or instead of taking medication). If you contact me for advice I will do my best to respond but this is not always possible due to numbers of requests and my work-load at the time. My latest article about living with suicidal ideas is published here.
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