Research cluster: Mental health
Addressing mental health inequalities in organisation and community services with experts by experience.
About our research
About our research
Our research group combines a range of disciplines, ideologies and approaches in the exploration of mental health.
We co-create significant, global contributions to the field of mental health with experts by experience. This includes people with complex histories in inpatient and community services at different stages of their lives, carers and significant others.
The scope of our work embraces human rights and social justice to understand the complexities and trauma associated with mental health.
We work within the community to make sense of these complex factors and the vast inequalities across health and social care provisions.
We’ve shown our impact through:
- world-leading work on minimising restrictive interventions in mental health and related settings
- promoting nurse-led, trauma-informed care
- influencing practice and policy at a local and national level
- a strong emphasis on co-design and co-production and engaging experts by experience throughout the research process
- improvement-orientated methods that challenge cultural barriers and power imbalances by giving equal consideration to the experience of service users and service providers
Our goals
We align our research questions with the World Health Organisation’s special initiative for mental health and the European Mental Health 2020 Action Plan agendas.
Through our research, we’re aiming to:
- maintain a track record of excellence in impactful, global mental health research, policy, practice and education
- be the conduit between academia and services and the public to translate research findings
- become the destination of choice for doctoral, post-doctoral and knowledge transfer activities in mental health-related research
Hear from our lead researcher
Professor Joy Duxbury OBE discusses her research in mental health, with a focus on the reduction of coercive and restrictive practices.Our featured research
Other research
Reducing restrictive practice
Restrictive practices such as restraint, seclusion, enhanced observation or long-term segregation can be traumatising for service users and staff. They can lead to poor health outcomes including psychological and physical injury, or even death.
We worked with the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust to assess the implementation of their reducing restrictive practice strategy, and to what extent levels of conflict and harm changed following its introduction.
Resistant reduction network (RRN) Training
The RNN has developed mandatory national training standards to address the use of restrictive practices in mental health and learning disabilities settings.
We’re working with the RNN to evaluate the extent to which the training standards have been adopted and implemented in mental health trusts in England.
Public mental health
We’re investigating the role of patients as experts in the philosophy of psychiatry, and the development of a new public mental health approach to severe and enduring mental illness.
This project complements the recent focus on biomarkers and predictive genetic screening in psychiatric medicine.
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Key publications
- Hallett, N, Duxbury, J, McKee, T, Harrison, N, Haines, A, Craig, E and Anthony, J (2021) Taser use on individuals experiencing mental distress: An integrative literature review. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 28(1), pp 56-71
- Bergqvist, A (2021) ‘Schizophrenia as a Transformative Evaluative Concept: Perspectives on the Psychiatric Significance of the Personal Self in the Ethics of Recognition’. Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, 28(1), pp 23-26
- Bergqvist, A (2020) ‘Narrative Understanding, Value, and Diagnosis: A Particularist Account of Clinical Formulations and Shared Decision-making in Mental Health’ Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, 27(2), pp 149-167
- Izon, E, Berry, K, Wearden, A, Carter, L, Law, H and French, P (2021) Investigating Expressed Emotion (EE) in individuals at-risk of developing psychosis and their families over 12 months. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy in Press
- Hind, D, Allsopp, K, Chitsabesan, P and French, P (2021) The psychosocial response to a terrorist attack at Manchester Arena, 2017: a process evaluation BMC Psychology, 9:22
- Leah, C (2019) Approved mental health professionals: A jack of all trades? Hybrid professional roles within a mental health occupation. Qualitative Social Work, 0(0), pp 1-20
- Mulholland, H, McIntyre, JC, Haines-Delmont, A et al (2021) An investigation to identify individual socio-economic and health determinants of suicidal ideation using responses to a cross-sectional, community-based public health survey. BMJ Open, 0:e035252
- Haines-Delmont, A,Chahal, G, Bruen, AJ, Wall, A, Khan, CT, Sadashiv, R and Fearnley, D (2020) Testing Suicide Risk Prediction Algorithms Using Phone Measurements With Patients in Acute Mental Health Settings: Feasibility Study JMIR Mhealth Uhealth,8(6), e15901
- Duxbury, J, Baker, J, Downe, S, Jones, F, Greenwood, P, Thygesen, H, McKeown, M, Price, O, Scholes, A, Thomson, G and Whittington, R (2019) Minimising the use of physical restraint in acute mental health services: The outcome of a restraint reduction programme (‘REsTRAIN YOURSELF’) International Journal of Nursing Studies, July, 95, pp 40-48
- Riahi, S, Thomson, G and Duxbury, J (2020) A hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of ‘last resort’ in the use of restraint Int. J. Mental Health Nurse, 29, pp 1218-1229
- Parry, SL, Williams, T, and Burbidge, C (2021) Restorative Parenting: Delivering Trauma-Informed Residential Care for Children in Care Child Youth Care Forum
- Parry, S, Loren, E and Varese, F (2020) Young people’s narratives of hearing voices: Systemic influences and conceptual challenges Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, pp 1– 12
Contact
Contact us
You can contact individual members of the team through their staff profiles.
For general enquiries, please contact research group lead Prof Joy Duxbury.