Bernadette Wren

Bernadette Wren
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust · Gender Identity Development Service

About

30
Publications
9,019
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475
Citations

Publications

Publications (30)
Chapter
Evolutionary psychiatry attempts to explain and examine the development and prevalence of psychiatric disorders through the lens of evolutionary and adaptationist theories. In this edited volume, leading international evolutionary scholars present a variety of Darwinian perspectives that will encourage readers to consider 'why' as well as 'how' men...
Chapter
Evolutionary psychiatry attempts to explain and examine the development and prevalence of psychiatric disorders through the lens of evolutionary and adaptationist theories. In this edited volume, leading international evolutionary scholars present a variety of Darwinian perspectives that will encourage readers to consider 'why' as well as 'how' men...
Chapter
Full-text available
Evolutionary psychiatry attempts to explain and examine the development and prevalence of psychiatric disorders through the lens of evolutionary and adaptationist theories. In this edited volume, leading international evolutionary scholars present a variety of Darwinian perspectives that will encourage readers to consider 'why' as well as 'how' men...
Chapter
Full-text available
We discuss evolutionary perspectives on two neurodevelopmental disorders: Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Both have a genetic background, and we explore why these genes may have survived the process of natural selection. We draw on the concept of evolutionary mismatch, in which a trait that may ha...
Article
Full-text available
Although the theory of evolution lies at the heart of contemporary biology, its influence on the study of child psychology and psychiatry has been limited. In earlier work we have argued that evolutionary thinking has much of value for clinicians. Here, we explore the possible significance of evolutionary theory for understanding child abuse by mot...
Article
Full-text available
Issues of sexual reproduction lie at the core of evolutionary thinking, which often places an emphasis on how individuals attempt to maximise the number of successful offspring that they can produce. At first sight, it may therefore appear that individuals who opt for gender-affirming medical interventions are acting in ways that are evolutionarily...
Article
This grounded theory study explored parents’ experiences of responding to their children’s need for understanding parental mental health concerns. Fifteen parents with severe and enduring mental health difficulties participated in the study. The findings suggest four main social processes that influence parents’ talk with their children about paren...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper reports on a sub-section of findings of a qualitative study that explored parents’ decision-making about and responses to their children’s need to understand parental mental health concerns. Fifteen parents with severe and enduring mental health difficulties participated in the study. Findings describes how parents’ own meaning-making in...
Article
Full-text available
We suggest that the traditional disease model, still dominant in psychiatry, is less than ideal for making sense of a range of psychological issues such as the effects of early childhood experiences on development. We argue that a model based on evolutionary thinking can deepen understanding and aid clinical practice by showing how behaviours, bodi...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, I explore how postmodern ideas about gender may impact on clinicians working with gender variant children and adolescents. The postmodern turn has built on the feminist rejection of the idea of 'essential' gender, to further interrogate accepted conceptions of sex and gender and the stability of all identity categories. Some queer th...
Article
Social domains are classes of interpersonal processes each with distinct procedural rules underpinning mutual understanding, emotion regulation and action. We describe the features of three domains of family life – safety, attachment and discipline/expectation – and contrast them with exploratory processes in terms of the emotions expressed, the ro...
Article
Objectives. This paper reports on a subset of findings from a wider ranging grounded theory analysis of therapy and recovery processes in psychosis. It describes therapist activities involved in maintaining an observational perspective during therapy and the links between these and other therapist activities. Design. Grounded theory was used to ex...
Article
Full-text available
The evidence-based culture of modern mental health policy and service delivery is being extended through funded efforts to accelerate implementation of research findings in practice settings. In this paper, we argue that this linear model of research and policy-making is profoundly ill adapted to the nature of practice realities and real-world poli...
Article
Full-text available
Research with reflexive, narrative accounts has grown in popularity within psychology, not least because it legitimates the deployment of clinical skills. These skills are often directed toward evaluating the quality and substance of narratives according to criteria that are intrinsic to models of psychological well-being and clearly relate to prof...
Article
There has been little conceptual bridge building between what individuals report as helpful in recovery and how psychological therapy might impact on recovery in psychosis. This study explores the links between therapy and recovery in psychosis. Grounded theory was chosen as an appropriate methodology to distil an explanatory account across the qua...
Article
This study set out to explore therapy processes in psychosis with an initial focus on reflexivity and how this might be expressed in therapy conversations. Leiman's (2000) definition of reflexivity was used as a starting-point for an exploratory investigation of the use of language as reflective activity. Grounded theory was chosen as an appropriat...
Article
This exploratory study involved the qualitative analysis of the responses of eight children with atypical gender identity organization to open-ended questions about their experiences of secondary school. The aim was to develop an understanding of these young people's interaction with their peers. It became apparent that all but one of the participa...
Article
Qualitative approaches to research are often believed to make a good fit for clinician/researchers as they are typically characterized by more open-ended and exploratory questions concerning meanings and processes. For the clinician, qualitative research papers often offer elaborations of rich and detailed empirical material that can extend our und...
Article
This article looks at the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (child and adolescent criteria) as used in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). It considers how gender identity disorder came to be in the fourth edition, and explores some of the problematic aspects of the DSM-IV criteria. The authors argue that resea...
Article
In this article I describe the accounts of a group of parents with transgendered adolescents. I look specifically at how the parents try to build an intelligible story of the young people's gender identity and how their story shapes their coping strategies. For the qualitative study on which this article is based, I interviewed adolescents with a w...
Article
Full-text available
In this article I describe the accounts of a group of parents with transgendered adolescents. I look specifically at how the parents try to build an intelligible story of the young people’s gender identity and how their story shapes their coping strategies. For the qualitative study on which this article is based, I interviewed adolescents with a w...
Article
This article describes the misery and frustration of young people for whom the external reality of the body is at odds with their gender identity. As hormonal and surgical treatments to alter the sexual body increase in sophistication, clinicians may be under pressure to provide this treatment to the under-18s – if only for the postponement of pube...
Article
In attempting to understand the aetiology and progress of childhood illness, where the presentation is a mixture of physical and emotional distress, an overarching systemic approach is required, combining a broad range of psychological and somatic factors in a comprehensive formulation. The clinician needs to shuttle between the comprehensive pictu...

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