Mick Mckeown

• PhD, BA(Hons)
• Professor at University of Central Lancashire

A qualitative study of staff and service users' views of recovery was undertaken in a UK high secure hospital working to implement recovery practices. 30 staff and 25 service users participated in semi-structured interviews or focus groups. Thematic analysis identified four broad accounts of how recovery was made sense of in the high secure environ...

An introduction to a special issue of Critical & Radical Social Work journal (Nov 2016) exploring contemporary social movements in mental health and the legacy of the work of radical theorist and activist Peter Sedgwick.

There has recently been a re-emergence of interest in non-reductive historical materialist modes for analysing social movements. A precursor of this is found in the work of mental health activist and Marxist theorist Peter Sedgwick. We contend that Sedgwick’s work retains utility for theorising radical mental health movements in the twenty-first ce...

Introduction The three card game, sometimes called find the queen, is a classic confidence trick, typically taking place on an impromptu table top, set up on pavement or street corner. The tricksters usually operate in teams, pulling in punters and ‘losing’ games with their fellows to persuade prospective speculators the game is winnable. For our t...

Relational Practice is increasingly applied across people facing services, including Health, Education, Criminal Justice and Social Work. The importance of relationships, ways of connecting and being with others cannot be underestimated in relation to positive health and wellbeing outcomes (such as mental health recovery, overcoming social challeng...

There is an over-reliance on structured risk assessments and restrictive practices for managing self-harm and suicidality in inpatient mental health and emergency department settings, despite a lack of supporting evidence. Alternative relational care approaches prioritising interpersonal relationships are needed. We present a definition of relation...

This hermeneutic phenomenological study illustrates the value of key aspects of interpretative hermeneutics for illuminating the time shared between patients and students in forensic unit for men carrying a personality disorder diagnosis through interviews. The participants were being-with in their own time and space, sharing ordinary activities an...

Laughter, a joke or banter can be essential to building positive relationships between patients and nurses. Students represent the present and future of mental health nursing, often having more interactions with patients than registered nurses. Despite the many benefits of humour, some considerations must be taken into account, particularly with re...

Student mental health nurses have greater patient contact than registered nurses, and this is appreciated by patients. This phenomenological study explored the impact of patients and student mental health nurses' time shared on forensic units for men carrying a personality disorder diagnosis. Phenomenology was the underpinning philosophy of this re...

Background Establishing and maintaining relationships and ways of connecting and being with others is an important component of health and wellbeing. Harnessing the relational within caring, supportive, educational, or carceral settings as a systems response has been referred to as relational practice. Practitioners, people with lived experience, a...

Defining or framing relational practice The Who Relational practice isn't just focused upon separate relationships, for example between care giver and patient, but is a complex mix of processes and context, operating at multiple levels and in interplay between people, systems and organisations. Whilst at the heart of this is people and practitioner...

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of a novel offender personality disorder (OPD) higher education programme and the research evaluation results collected over a three-year period. Data from Phase 1 was collected from a face-to-face mode of delivery, and Phase 2 data collected from the same programme was from an online mode of...

This discussion paper offers a critical provocation to my mental health nursing colleagues. Drawing upon David Graeber's account of bullshit work, work that is increasingly meaningless for workers, I pose the question: Is mental health nursing a bullshit job? Ever-increasing time spent on record keeping as opposed to direct care appears to represen...

Background Establishing and maintaining relationships and ways of connecting and being with others is an important component of health and wellbeing. Harnessing the relational within caring, supportive, educational or carceral settings as a systems response has been referred to as relational practice. Practitioners, people with lived experience, ac...

Background: Wide differences in health exist between places in the UK, underscored by economic inequalities. Preston, an economically disadvantaged city in England, implemented a new approach to economic development, known as the Community Wealth Building programme. Public and non-profit organisations modified their procurement policies to support...

This report conducted a ‘Scoping and Feasibility Study for a new Foundational Economy Academy’ in Wales, during the first quarter of 2022. We explored how to effectively enhance the Foundational Economy (FE) capability of public service practitioners and learn lessons from the celebrated Preston Model. The report conducted primary research and revi...

Purpose Secure mental health services in one UK region have acted within a network to develop a range of involvement practices. A new quality benchmarking tool has been created to appraise the implementation of these involvement practices. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a qualitative evaluation of this development. Design/methodology/...

There are great disparities in health between places in the UK. People living in poorer areas are dying on average 9 years earlier than in wealthy areas, largely due to regional economic differences, including high unemployment, low wages and social inequality, unrest and injustice that accompany economic disadvantage. Preston in the north-west of...

This chapter presents a critical appraisal of mental health nursing’s interest in and relationship to advocacy with a view to highlighting the role of advanced practice mental health nurses (APMHNs), amongst other team members, in both performing advocacy and respecting and acting upon the voice of advocates. In this regard, a distinction will be m...

Background

Background A traumatic childbirth experience affects ~30% of women each year, with negative impacts on maternal, infant, and family wellbeing. Women classified as vulnerable or marginalised are those more likely to experience a psychologically traumatising birth. A key contributory factor for a traumatic childbirth experience is women’s relationshi...

This short paper responds to Johnston Birchall’s observations on the future of the co-operative movement in relation to the crisis of social care in the UK. The authors put the case for a union co-operative model that offers a means for forming worker co-operatives for social care inclusive of trade unions and framed around an ethic of care, enhanc...

Aims Research in the area of mHealth, has shown much promise in the development of mobile phone interventions which look at the assessment and treatment in real-time of psychiatric disorders. Within the context of Severe Mental Illnesses (SMI), such as psychosis, communication and understanding between health professionals and service users in the...

An Evaluation of a Pilot Multi-Professional Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Higher Education Programme Purpose – Workforce development is crucial to the offender personality disorder (OPD) service, to provide contemporary, evidenced care and treatment. We provide an overview and the research evaluation results of a regional higher education pro...

Purpose Workforce development is crucial to the offender personality disorder (OPD) service to provide contemporary, evidenced care and treatment. This study aims to provide an overview and the research evaluation results of a regional higher education programme delivered to a range of criminal justice workers used on the OPD pathway. Design/metho...

This edited collection casts a critical eye on the concept of coproduction in our national mental health and learning disability services. Is it naive idealism? A one-way road to co-optioning the independent user/survivor movement? A major challenge to the hegemony of the psychiatric profession? The next progressive step in the shift away from medi...

Objectives The aim of the project was to examine the acceptability and feasibility of a mobile phone application-based intervention ‘TechCare’, for individuals with psychosis in the North West of England. The main objectives were to determine whether appropriate individuals could be identified and recruited to the study and whether the TechCare App...

Aim This research report outlines key findings from an exploratory study with women, living in the UK, who come from a Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) practicing community, on the psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on their mental health. Methodology A focus group discussion took place with seven women recruited from a specialist service for women at...

Purpose The label “Personality Disorder” continues to divide opinion. Challenges to the terminology of personality disorder led by people with lived experience and supported by critical practitioners and academics are tempered by acknowledgement of certain positive social consequences of obtaining a diagnosis. This study aims to engage service user...

Background Previous research has examined individual-level and place characteristics as correlates of subjective wellbeing, with many studies concluding that individual factors (e.g. health, finances) are more strongly related to wellbeing. However, this ‘dualistic’ approach has been challenged, with some arguing that it is impossible to disentangl...

This paper attempts a critical discussion of the possibilities for mental health nurses to claim a particular right of conscientious objection to their involvement in enforced pharmaceutical interventions. We nest this within a more general critique of perceived shortcomings of psychiatric services, and injustices therein. Our intention is to consi...

This chapter makes a case for trade union support for a new wave of cooperative development and charts some of the early instances of collaborative working in this regard framed by the Preston Model. We argue for closer affinities between the trade union and cooperative movements in pursuance of mutual interests of renewal and reinvigoration. We be...

Background: Patients and public members are increasingly involved across the different stages of the research process. Their involvement is particularly important in the conception and design of applied health research where it enables people with lived experience to influence the aims, content, focus and methods. Objective: To evaluate the proc...

Scoping review protocol of universal school- and community- based resilience focused interventions with children and young people. The review aims to answer the following questions: • What is the scope of the evidence base for universally provided resilience-focused school- and community-based intervention in enhancing mental well-being of childr...

Objectives This integrative review provides a collective understanding of the experiences of student mental health nurses and service users carrying a diagnosis of personality disorder and the time they share together. Design Published studies about the time service users and students share together were systematically selected in order to integra...

Objectives: The physical health of people diagnosed with mental illness is a significant source of health inequality, with this group being three times more likely to have a physical illness and dying 15-20 years earlier than those without diagnosed mental illness. Unhealthy lifestyles are a major contributor to this. The purpose of this study was...

What might the world look like in the aftermath of COVID-19? Almost every aspect of society will change after the pandemic, but if we learn lessons then life can be better. Featuring expert authors from across academia and civil society, this book offers ideas that might put us on alternative paths for positive social change. A rapid intervention i...

The union co-op is a model whose time has come. It is a fully unionised, worker co-operative, owned and controlled by those who own and work in it. Worker’s control, democracy and equality are built into the model which offers a solution to inequality and injustice both in and outside the workplace. Co-ops and unions are social movements with share...

This study explores the experiences of the black children and young men that attended a Youth Offending Team (YOT) in Liverpool, a city in the North of England, UK. It focuses on the perspectives of both the YOT practitioners and the black children/young men as they develop working relationships with each other. Through this two-way prism the back...

This editorial highlights some of the public health hazards implicit within the government’s treatment of migrants and locates these within a wider frame of mental health. In the midst of a pandemic threatening countless lives and a belated lockdown inducing widespread mental stress, the Government continues to pursue a Hostile Environment policy....

People of BAMME (Black, Asian, Minority, and Migrant ethnic) heritage in the UK experience various anomalies when engaging with mental health services. Typically concentrated at secondary and secure levels of care, these discrepant experiences interact with a reticence to uptake mental health support at the primary care level. Official, national an...

Latterly there has been a growing interest in better supporting the families of people cared for in secure or forensic mental health services with these concerns going back some thirty years. Collectively, we have been involved in a number of relevant projects including early work to establish psychosocial approaches at Ashworth High Secure hospita...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences of survivors of the mental health system regularly attending a mental health resource centre predominantly but not exclusively focussed on needs of the BAME community. Design/methodology/approach In total, 25 participants took part in a qualitative research study regarding their experienc...

In an editorial concerned with radicalism, it is perhaps appropriate to start with Karl Marx. To paraphrase this greatest of political philosophers, we must learn the lessons of history. So, I wish to consider the idea of nursing radicalism, with recourse to a selective consideration of the past, contemplation of the present, and, most crucially, t...

Coercive practices, such as physical restraint, are used globally to respond to violent, aggressive and other behaviours displayed by mental health service users.1 A number of approaches have been designed to aid staff working within services to minimise the use of restraint and other restrictive practices. One such approach, the ‘REsTRAIN Yourself...

This chapter is written by people with quite different experiences of violence in relation to the practice and organisation of psychiatric services. It is our intention to draw upon our own collective experiences, including some relevant research studies to explore the notion of legitimacy with regard to violence and psychiatry. The social relation...

Introduction Safe staffing and coercive practices are of pressing concern for mental health services. These are inter‐dependent and the relationship is under‐researched. Aim To explore views on staffing levels in context of attempting to minimise physical restraint practices on mental health wards. Findings emerged from a wider dataset with the br...

International efforts to minimize coercive practices include the US Six Core Strategies© (6CS). This innovative approach has limited evidence of its effectiveness, with few robustly designed studies, and has not been formally implemented or evaluated in the UK. An adapted version of the 6CS, which we called ‘REsTRAIN Yourself’ (RY), was devised to...

Background: Physical restraint is a coercive intervention used to prevent individuals from harming themselves or others. However, serious adverse effects have been reported. Minimising the use of restraint requires a multimodal approach to target both organisational and individual factors. The 'Six Core Strategies' developed in America, underpinne...

This article draws on the published work of Frantz Fanon to engage critically with the findings of a qualitative study of experiences within an alternative black mental health centre in Liverpool. Fanon’s critique of colonialism and exhortations for revolutionary action chime with the activist beginnings of this centre, and the positive experiences...

2 Word count (not including abstract, refs etc.): 9,174 Abstract Different aspects of the neighbourhood social environment have been linked with mental ill-health, however the mechanisms underlying these associations remain poorly understood because of the number and complexity of the components involved. We used a novel statistical approach, netwo...

This chapter draws on an anecdote from my past to explore the potential for creating and sustaining solidarity between social movement activists concerned with mental health and mental health services. My story connects with some of the tensions and turbulence of relations that can occur in the context of seeking political alliances between element...

This chapter presents thinking emerging from trade union and service user movement forums about the desirability of closer dialogue and alliances in a context of neo-liberal threats to public health and welfare systems. Freirian ideas underpin conclusions advocating development of inclusive workplace democracies for better organising mental health...

In Western society, policy and legislation seeks to minimize restrictive interventions, including physical restraint; yet research suggests the use of such practices continues to raise concerns. Whilst international agreement has sought to define physical restraint, diversity in the way in which countries use restraint remains disparate. Research t...

Purpose Whilst there is growing evidence to suggest that the recovery college (RC) environment supports students towards their mental health recovery (Meddings et al., 2015b), students’ initial motivations for engagement, alongside factors that may hinder or support attendance, have yet to be exclusively explored. Design/methodology/approach All...

Purpose This paper is an author’s reply to the article by Cresswell (2017) critiquing the original piece by Spandler and McKeown (2017) on truth and reconciliation (T&R) in psychiatry. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach It continues the dialogue about the nature of reconciliation in mental health services and refle...

The relative burden of mental health disorders is increasing globally, in terms of prevalence and disability. There is limited data available to guide treatment choices for clinicians in low resourced settings, with mHealth technologies being a potentially beneficial avenue to bridging the large mental health treatment gap globally. The aim of the...

The overseas aid budget is coming under attack, both in the UK and the USA. But that shortsighted view does not take into account how working together to help communities suffering under the shadow of terrorism can actually help us combat extremism. Our research illustrated how money raised in north-west England changed the lives of people in north...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the case for a truth and reconciliation (T&R) process in the context of mental health services. Design/methodology/approach The approach is a conceptual review of T&R approaches; a consideration of why they are important; and how they might be applied in the context of mental health services and ps...

Services for people requiring secure forms of care Learning outcomes This chapter aims to encourage: 1. Development of critical thinking about key issues in forensic mental health. 2. Contemplation of different approaches to care and treatment for this client group emphasising the key role of supportive relationships. 3. Consideration of the role o...

Objectives: Technological advances in healthcare have shown promise when delivering interventions for mental health problems such as psychosis. The aim of this project is to develop a mobile phone intervention for people with psychosis and to conduct a feasibility study of the TechCare App. Methods: The TechCare App will assess participant’s sympto...

In a climate of deregulation, brutal cuts to spending on health and social care and wider welfare, and the privileging of a ‘free market’ economy, the NHS is in a ‘critical condition’. Recent ‘reforms’ to the NHS and healthcare education are written in the language of neoliberalism, a global philosophy premised on celebration of a privatised econom...

Background This paper describes the community engagement process undertaken to ascertain the focus, development and implementation of an intervention to improve iodised salt consumption in rural communities in North West Pakistan. The Jirga is a traditional informal structure, which gathers men respected within their community and acts in a governi...

This article makes connections between matters of democracy in wider society and the workplace, building upon an earlier piece in Asylum arguing for trade unions to organise for reciprocal alliances with survivor movements. Thinking in this direction creates possibilities for consideration of a new workplace democracy in public services bringing to...

Introduction In the UK, mental illness is a major source of disease burden costing in the region of £105 billion pounds. mHealth is a novel and emerging field in psychiatric and psychological care for the treatment of mental health difficulties such as psychosis. Objective To develop an intelligent real-time therapy (iRTT) mobile intervention (Tec...

This paper reports on the findings of three qualitative research studies undertaken within, respectively, medium and low secure units in one UK region, and a high secure mental health hospital in England (UK). The first study investigated alliance based involvement practices. The second explored service user and staff views and sense making of the...

Iodine deficiency is still prevalent in parts of Pakistan, despite the introduction of a national Iodine Deficiency Disorder Control Programme in 1994. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the knowledge, attitudes and practice regarding the use of iodised salt in a brick kiln community, and to use this information to design an...

This commentary has been prompted by a degree of disquiet amongst the UK mental health nursing community in response to the Shape of Caring Review on the future of nurse education in England (Willis 2015). Proposals for the structure of nurse education have been interpreted as emphasising generic at the expense of field specific (e.g. mental health...

In this chapter we suggest that education for a critical understanding of democracy is central to the delivery of high-quality patient-centred care. Development of skills and knowledge which support change in practice can and must be brought into the classroom, offering opportunities for positive role modelling and real- time learning. Techniques b...

This chapter presents reflections and experiences of our involvement in an annual film festival hosted by the Comensus (service-user and carer-led) initiative at UCLan (Mckeown et al., 2012). Here we discuss successes and failures in realising the goals of the film festival including the extent to which we have made links into the classroom and the...

This book takes an appreciative but critical view of independent mental health advocacy.

Introduction Ideas which help bring mental health users and survivors together with the wider disability movement are increasingly important given the current threats to welfare provision and the need to defend (and sometimes extend) support, both to mental health service users and disabled people. Questions arise, however, over the extent to which...

Football can bring people together in acts of solidarity and togetherness. This spirit is most evocatively illustrated in the world renowned football anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone (YNWA). In this paper we argue that this spirit can be effectively harnessed in nursing and mental health care. We draw on data from qualitative interviews undertaken as...

This is a book that anyone interested in the experience of madness or care and treatment in modern mental health services should read. It is intensely profound, poetic and richly descriptive of the personal and interpersonal experience of madness, institutional detention and intervention. The harrowing and sobering lack of care at stake in much of...

Plato referred to democracy as a charming form of government. In the UK the impact of the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry (2013), Berwick (2013), and Clwyd-Hart Reviews (2013) has fundamentally influenced the public perception of nurses, resulting in a significant legitimacy crisis for the profession. Nursing has arguably lost some of its charm with the...

There has been much debate about the use of restraint to control aggressive and violent patients in health and social care services. Although concerns apply across different sectors of service provision it is often thought to be a more significant issue in mental health settings. Furthermore, it appears that forcible restraint is more readily accep...