Angela Kennedy

Burnout of healthcare workers is of increasing concern as workload pressures mount. Burnout is usually conceptualised as resulting from external pressures rather than internal resilience and although is not a diagnosable condition, it is related to help seeking for its psychological sequelae. To understand how staff support services can intervene w...

Background: Burnout of healthcare workers is of increasing concern as workload pressures mount. Burnout is usually conceptualised as resulting from external pressures rather than internal resilience and although is not a diagnosable condition, it is related to help seeking for its psychological sequelae. Objective: To understand how staff support s...

A positive trajectory of life after an attempted suicide is extremely limited in research despite its advantage of aiding salutary outcomes. A systematic review of the qualitative research was conducted to explore the impact the attempt of taking your own life has had on your life and your work, to discover what changes participants have made to mo...

The current article describes the application of the Compassion Focussed (CF) formulation to the interaction between individuals and their social context. The standard CF formulation [1] would see the person’s fears as inadvertently reinforced by their attempts to cope with the underlying issue. However, sometimes such attempts to cope can also rei...

Background The detrimental impact of Covid-19 has led to an urgent need to support the wellbeing of UK National Health Service and care workers. This research develops an online diary to support the wellbeing of staff in public healthcare in real-time, allowing the exploration of population wellbeing and pro-active responses to issues identified....

Background: Successive governments have placed service users' experiences at the heart of mental health services delivery and development. However, little is known about service users' experiences of assessments and there is some evidence that assessments can cause harm. Aims: To synthesise the qualitative literature on service users' experience...

Background The detrimental impact of Covid-19 has led to an urgent need to support the wellbeing of UK National Health Service and care workers. This research develop an online diary to support the wellbeing of staff in public healthcare in real-time, allowing the exploration of population wellbeing and pro-active responses to issues identified. Me...

Background The trauma-informed care programme at the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys Foundation NHS Trust identified a need to evaluate the ongoing service-wide trauma-informed care implementation effort. An absence of staff, service user and system-related outcomes specific to trauma-informed care presented barriers to monitoring the adoption of trauma...

Background The detrimental impact of Covid-19 has led to an urgent need to support the wellbeing of UK National Health Service and care workers.Objective To develop a diary to support the wellbeing of staff in public healthcare in real-time, allowing the exploration of population wellbeing and pro-active responses to issues identified.Methods The d...

Background Essential workers have faced many difficult situations working during the pandemic. Staff may feel that they, or other people, have acted wrongly and be distressed by this. This represents moral injury, which has been linked with significant mental ill health. Methods This survey asked essential workers in County Durham and Darlington a...

Trauma-informed care is rising in popularity as services are recognising that traditional models are not offering a capacity for healing once thought. Service providers are becoming aware of individuals facing significant re-traumatisation using their services, and so a practical need to explore and understand approaches that accounts for these occ...

Essential workers have faced many difficult situations working during in the pandemic. Staff may feel that they, or other people, have acted wrongly and be distressed by this. This represents moral injury, which has been linked with significant mental ill health. This survey asked essential workers in County Durham and Darlington about their experi...

Whilst encounters in psychology are typically experienced relationally, qualitative dyadic research in psychology is relatively rare. This study used qualitative dyadic research to understand psychological therapy assessments, exploring how experiences are actively created through situated, relational encounters. Seven dyads participated in qualita...

Freedom of Information (FOIs) were sent to all Mental Health Trusts in England asking about the implementation of Routine Enquiry (RE). The results were disappointing: only a third of Trusts had a strategy for implementation of RE; only five Trusts returned data to NHS Digital; 38% of all SUs in the Trusts received RE (based only on 5 responses); o...

Trauma-informed approaches emerged partly in response to research demonstrating that trauma is widespread across society, that it is highly correlated with mental health and that this is a costly public health issue. The fundamental shift in providing support using a trauma-informed approach is to move from thinking ‘What is wrong with you?’ to con...

Trauma-informed Care (TIC) is an approach to human services based on the understanding that most people in contact with services are more likely to have experienced some level of trauma, adversity, and loss and this understanding needs to be held by those involved so that it may permeate service relationships and delivery. This article reviews TIC...

Child abuse and neglect are strongly associated with many subsequent mental health problems. This review summarizes the research on how adult mental health services respond when child abuse or neglect become known. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Scopus were searched for studies with rates of responding in various ways to child abuse and neglect by mental h...

Child abuse and neglect play a causal role in many mental health problems. Knowing whether users of mental health services were abused or neglected as children could be considered essential for developing comprehensive formulations and effective treatment plans. In the present study we report the findings of a systematic review, using independent s...

In 2008 it became policy that all those on the care programme approach were assessed for sexual violence/ abuse. The implementation of this policy was assessed 8 years on. The findings of a survey and data request to Health and Social Care Information Centre are disappointing. We argue that this important initiative needs to be reinvigorated. Decla...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain trauma-informed approaches (TIAs) to mental health. It outlines evidence on the link between trauma and mental health, explains the principles of TIAs and their application in mental health and explores the extent to which TIAs are impacting in the UK. Design/methodology/approach The app...

Introduction: Research in Sexual Assault Referral Centres has shown that 40% of those attending are known to mental health services. The question we posed in this study was to what extent do mental health services know about this group? This was a pertinent question to ask as in 2008 the Department of Health (DH) amended the Care Programme Approac...

This case report is a shared, compassion-focused therapy account between a therapist and someone with a 20-year history of schizophrenia. It shows the usefulness of compassion in facilitating the courage to address the worst symptoms of psychosis. It does this by promoting a mindfulness of mind and emotional regulation. This approach helped create...

Compassion-focused therapy was developed to enhance physiological systems related to well-being, safeness, and connectedness in people where shame and self-criticism inhibited progress in therapy (Gilbert, 2000; Gilbert & Irons, 2005). This system links attachment experiences with emotion regulation capacities, with integrative capacities of the mi...

Psychosis and dissociation are usually considered independently in their phenomenology, aetiology and treatment within mainstream psychiatry and psychology. Recently, research has suggested a relationship that may be more consistent with historical views of them as related phenomena. Unfortunately, the implications for the practising therapist have...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the novel use of the compassion focused formulation framework, to give thought to the ways that staff can be distracted from their primary task. It aims to examine systemic ideas for supporting staff to be effective and compassionate in their mental health care. Design/methodology/approach – Thi...

The sorption of pesticides to soil particles has implications for their distribution and fate in the soil environment. A batch equilibrium technique was used to investigate sorption of the fungicide AEC623892 to intact and hydrogen-peroxide-treated whole soils and several particle-size fractions isolated from them. Sorption of AEC623892 to the soil...

Perceptions of the value of work for people with severe and enduring mental health problems have changed frequently over the last two decades. With the new social inclusion agenda manifest in the Disability Discrimination Act and in the NHS modernization agenda, work is once again in vogue. There is a need for a way of evaluating work which draws o...