Paula Reavey

London South Bank University | LSBU · Department of Psychology

The focus on the practice of remembering has been highly productive for memory studies, but it creates difficulties in understanding personal commitment to particular versions of the past. Autobiographical memories of difficult and distressing past episodes – or ‘vital memories’ – require extensive and ongoing management. We describe the issues tha...

In this paper, we explore some of the tensions involved in the process of engaging with embodiment research. Although a significant volume of discursive work on “the body” and its role in social relations now exists, there is little in the way of empirical research that moves the focus away from discourse alone to concentrate on other modalities, s...

Forensic mental health inpatients in medium-secure settings have a limited capacity for sexual expression during their stay in hospital. This is due to a number of factors, including a lack of willingness on behalf of staff to engage with sexual issues, as a result of safety fears and ambiguity regarding the ability of the patient to consent. Furth...

The UK is currently facing a social and economic crisis in which social class-based inequalities continue to deepen, with psychological consequences and precursors that are not widely understood. Evidence for the asymmetric impact of the Covid 19-pandemic and related crises, an ongoing Equality Act (2010 Review, and a policy context focused on ‘lev...

Narratives around alcohol are important in determining how people decide who or what qualifies as problematic alcohol use. Narratives draw on common representations that are subject to influences including historical and normative influences. We argue that there are two dominant narratives that relate to how alcohol use disorder (AUD) is identified...

Medium secure forensic psychiatric units are unique environments within the broader “post asylum” landscape of mental health services. Length of stay is much greater and restrictions on behavior, including sexual behavior, are legally and institutionally legitimated, due to concerns regarding risk. As a result, sexuality is rarely explored with ser...

Medium secure forensic psychiatric units are unique environments within the broader “post asylum” landscape of mental health services. Length of stay is much greater and restrictions on behavior, including sexual behavior, are legally and institutionally legitimated, due to concerns regarding risk. As a result, sexuality is rarely explored with ser...

In this paper, we consider changes to memorial practices for mental health service users during the asylum period of the mid-nineteenth up to the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. The closing of large asylums in the UK has been largely welcomed by professionals and service-users alike, but their closure has led to a de...

In this paper, we consider the changes to memorial practice for mental health service users, during the asylum period of the mid-19th up to the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The closing of the large asylum in the UK has been largely welcomed by professionals and service-users alike, and yet, their closure has led to a decrease...

In this article we will contribute to the literature on carceral and institutional geographies through exploring the complexities of care, control, mobility and stasis thrown up by these tensions in a UK forensic psychiatric unit. We explore these complexities through empirical material gathered with staff and patients on a UK medium secure psychia...

Clinical guidelines recommend intensive community care service treatment (ICCS) to reduce adolescent psychiatric inpatient care. We have previously reported that the addition of ICCS led to a substantial decrease in hospital use and improved school re-integration. The aim of this study is to undertake a randomised controlled trial (RCT) comparing a...

Sitting between the psychiatric and criminal justice systems, and yet fully located in neither, forensic psychiatric units are complex spaces. Both a therapeutic landscape and a carceral space, forensic services must try to balance the demands of therapy and security, or recovery and risk, within the confines of a strictly controlled institutional...

Background: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) has received substantial international attention since its founding in the late 1990s, with a growing evidence base relating to its nature and impact across a variety of settings. Aims: To identify the effectiveness of MHFA upon a range of outcomes, recipients, its cost-effectiveness, and the mechanisms of...

Background: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a mental health intervention that teaches people how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue. Reviews of the implementation of MHFA found between 68 and 88% of trained Mental Health First Aiders had used their skills when in contact with someone experienci...

Preface to the Second Edition It is over a decade since I began work on the first edition of Visual Methods in Psychology and a great deal has changed, including my own relationship to visual methods. I have become more enamoured as well as critical of the possibilities for using this rich yet troubling approach to the study of the psychological....

Introduction: There are no current comprehensive models related to problematic pornography use (PPU) that can directly assist psychological therapists who work with people with these issues. The absence of psychological models results in the therapist being unable to benefit from evidence-based practice and having to work completely idiosyncratical...

Sexuality in secure mental healthcare has been overlooked in both clinical praxis and academic research. In the UK, there exist no formal policies to inform staff approaches to managing inpatient sexuality. The limited research that has been undertaken in this field has found that often, prohibitive approaches are favoured, which may affect how inp...

This letter seeks to synthesise methodological challenges encountered in a cohort of Wellcome Trust-funded research projects focusing on sexualities and health. The ten Wellcome Trust projects span a diversity of gender and sexual orientations and identities, settings; institutional and non-institutional contexts, lifecourse stages, and explore a r...

How are relations of care and security between hospital staff and patients organized through sound? This article argues that the shifting distinction between meaningful sound and noise is fundamental to the lived experience of immersion in organizational acoustic environment. Based around a qualitative study of listening practices and ‘ear work’ at...

1 Pornography use is widespread and as such may have potential effects on the individuals that view it and on society itself. The question of whether pornography is harmful warrants investigation. A non-systematic narrative review of research literature pertaining to pornography was undertaken. Taking a historical and social perspective on pornogra...

MDMA has a variety of pro-social effects, such as increased friendliness and heightened empathy, yet there is a distinct lack of research examining how these effects might intertwine with a romantic relationship. This article seeks to compensate for this absence and explore heterosexual couples’use of MDMA through the lens of the boundaries they co...

The impact of social and material conditions on mental health is well established but lacking in a coherent approach. We offer the concept of ‘vitality’ as means of describing how environments facilitate ‘feelings of being alive’ that cut across existing diagnostic categories. Drawing on the work of Stern, Fuchs, Worms and Duff, we argue that vital...

One challenge facing psychological studies of affect and emotion is how we can capture the situated, located assemblage of practice involved in affective experiences: the where, how, when, who, and what of affective meaning making. Here we argue for a place for map-making in the methodological toolbox of qualitative Psychology. Participatory mappin...

The climate or atmosphere of a ward in secure psychiatric care is typically studied by examining the relationship between social and environmental factors. However the experiences of patients are irreducible to a set of discrete dimensions or factors. Drawing on recent work in affect theory and architectural studies, we argue for an approach to atm...

The concept of atmosphere is a way of emplacing affect and affect theory. Work in contemporary social geography has done much to demonstrate how elemental forces become enveloped in atmospheres. However it tends to under-theorise the role of historically structured socio-cultural forces and the modes of engagement of persons with the atmospheric. I...

One challenge facing psychological studies of affect and emotion is how we can capture the situated, located assemblage of practice involved in affective experiences: the where, how, when, who, and what of affective meaning making. Here we argue for a place for map-making in the methodological toolbox of qualitative Psychology. Participatory mappin...

This paper presents analysis from a study of staff and patient experiences of the restrictive environments of a forensic psychiatric unit. The paper conceptualises the forensic unit as an impermanent assemblage, enacted in and through practices that hold a future life outside the unit simultaneously near, yet far. We show how the near-far relations...

Medium secure forensic psychiatric units are unique environments within the broader ‘post asylum’ landscape of mental health services. Length of stay is much greater, a recovery-focused care system is much more difficult to implement, and there is a paucity of suitable “step-down” services. The aim of this study was to examine how forensic psychiat...

This paper presents analysis from a study of staff and patient experiences of the restrictive environments of a forensic psychiatric unit. The paper conceptualises the forensic unit as an impermanent assemblage, enacted in and through practices that hold a future life outside the unit simultaneously near, yet far. We show how the near-far relations...

This chapter explores how newly homeless people negotiate the hostile climate of public space, to seek out protective immunological bubbles in which they can exist in relative safety. Sloterdijk argues that all bubbles that they create as spaces of intimacy and interiority 'work towards bursting'. The bubbles of safety are created through drawing o...

Homelessness is an increasing problem in the UK, which intersects in multiple ways with experiences of mental distress. Within the term ‘homeless’ are contained people in a variety of living situations, including those living in temporary accommodation (hostels, couch surfing, B&Bs) as well those sleeping rough. The latter category is the least com...

This chapter explores the ways in which child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) inpatients interpret expressions of adult institutional power within the ward-place where they enact strategies of negotiation and resistance. This account understands age and mental distress as intersecting, mutually constituted axes of social inequality (C...

This edited collection includes work by people who use mental health services, activists and community groups, practitioners and academics who share an interest in the role of space and the environment in shaping experiences of distress and mental health. The book will be of interest to anyone researching, working or designing for mental health rel...

Memory work study on childhood experiences of fear in the context of home spaces

Background: Intensive community treatment to reduce dependency on adolescent psychiatric inpatient care is recommended in guidelines but has not been assessed in a randomised controlled trial in the UK. We designed a supported discharge service (SDS) provided by an intensive community treatment team and compared outcomes with usual care. Methods:...

The relationship between place and remembering has been a longstanding matter of phenomenological concern. The role of the ‘lived body’ in mediating acts of remembering in context is clearly crucial. In this paper we contribute to an ‘expanded view of memory’ by describing how remembering difficult or problematic events ― ‘vital memories’ ― draws u...

Much information in our lives is remembered in a social context, as we often reminisce about shared experiences with others, and more generally remember in the social context of our communities and our cultures. Memory researchers across disciplines and subdisciplines are actively exploring collaborative remembering. However, despite this common in...

Previous research on young people's satisfaction of inpatient services has often relied on the responses of carers and relevant practitioners. It is difficult to ascertain to what extent such reporting accurately represents the satisfaction levels of young people, with emerging research suggesting wide discrepancies. As part of a wider study evalua...

The dichotomy between 'truth' and 'falsity' in relation to memory is difficult to clearly sustain. The veridicality of memory is typically established by drawing on the local, normative procedures that operate in a given setting (e.g. legal, clinical, social). Since all procedures are strictly relative, all memories are technically either 'relative...

Institutions and organizations are defined by competing sociomaterial logics. Divergence between the ‘visible’ and the ‘hidden’ side of organization invites a critical work of ‘unveiling’. But such critique does not enable understanding of how coherency is accomplished between different modes of reason. This is performed in emergent third spaces, w...

Individuals with mental health problems are considered to be part of a group labeled ‘vulnerable’ in forensic psychology literature and the legal system more generally. In producing witness statements, there are numerous guidelines in the UK, designed to facilitate the production of reliable and valid accounts by those deemed to be vulnerable witne...

Individuals with mental health problems are considered to be part of a group labeled ‘vulnerable’ in forensic psychology literature and the legal system more generally. In producing witness statements, there are numerous guidelines in the UK, designed to facilitate the production of reliable and valid accounts by those deemed to be vulnerable witne...

Very little is known about the sexual activities of psychiatric patients during their stay in hospital and beyond. In this article, we have explored how mental health professionals working within a forensic psychiatric unit construct the issue of patient sexuality in order to ascertain the range of sexual possibilities open to patients. Drawing on...

Paper submitted, awaiting review

This book is concerned with particular kinds of autobiographical memories, amongst so-called ‘vulnerable’ groups, including survivors of child sexual abuse, adopted children and their families, forensic mental health service users and elderly persons in care home settings. With each group, we have learned of the importance of a particular class of...

Experiences of the space-time dimensions of contemporary mental health services are shaped according to what we describe here as a 'helicopter service', where professionals drop down into service users' lives for short, often pre-determined bursts of time. This can create a system where users' experiences are observed and assessed from a more dista...

Experiences of the space-time dimensions of contemporary mental health services are shaped according to what we describe here as a ‘helicopter service’, where professionals drop down into service users’ lives for short, often pre-determined bursts of time. This can create a system where users’ experiences are observed and assessed from a more dista...

In this article, we argue that emergent interests in social interaction, wider context and culture with regards to memory have united formerly disparate approaches within the discipline of psychology, namely, that from the discursive and experimental cognitive paradigms. Here, we develop the argument on the centrality of interaction and continuity...

Since the closure of the UK asylums, ‘the community’ has become short hand for describing a variety of disparate and complex spaces, in which service users manage their experiences of distress. An examination of such spaces here forms the basis of an analysis of the way in which service users move through and within space, to establish agency and d...

Secure forensic psychiatric care can be approached as an ‘institutional assemblage’. In place of the old ‘grand asylums’, modern units are emergent spaces of care and security that consist of heterogeneous and contradictory sets of elements. Secure units enact a folding of time and space, despite their porous boundaries and extensions into the comm...

Some people with physical disabilities experience difficulties in forming and maintaining intimate and sexual relationships (Taleporos and McCabe, 2001). Individuals with physical impairments may variously be seen as inferior, ‘not up to scratch’ and can be less valued than those thought to embody the cultural ideal of ‘normality’ (Edwards and Imri...

In this article, we argue that emergent interests in social interaction, wider context and culture with regards to memory have united formerly disparate approaches within the discipline of psychology, namely, that from the discursive and experimental cognitive paradigms. Here, we develop the argument on the centrality of interaction and continuity...

When visual approaches are used in the social sciences, the distinction between researcher and researched becomes destabilised, due to a greater transference of autonomy and narrative authority over to the participant who creates, organises and analyses data in partnership with the researcher. ‘Showing a world’ is more agentic, perhaps, than the tr...

The aim of this chapter is to review and make clear the variety of ways in which psychologists use visual images to address research questions. Visual research has been developed mainly by qualitative researchers as a way to study human experiences and to engage participants more fully in the research process. In contemporary culture more generally...

In this article we aim to contribute to psychosocial debates around selfhood by focusing empirically upon memories of jealousy and the ways in which potential subjectivities are both opened up and closed down. The paper presents a phenomenological narrative analysis of our research on jealousy produced through a memory work group. We identify three...

This article examines experiential accounts of young women's embodied experiences in everyday life, using a narrative and visual approach. The life history interview was aided by the use of photographs as a means to access specific memories of embodied experiences, rather than generic accounts of ‘the body’. In so doing, young women constructed two...

In this article, I argue that material locations (spaces) are not simply peripheral to acts of remembering but central to how the ongoing flow of memory and agency is constituted and experienced by individuals in their practice of memorial self-interpretation. This argument, however, can only be accepted when selfhood is treated as a form, a proces...

Abstract Objectives. To examine the accounts of people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and qualitatively explore self perceptions. Methods. Eleven people with BDD were interviewed using a semi-structured schedule. Participants brought photographs of themselves and drew a self-portrait. Transcribed interviews were analysed using a thematic analy...

This article discusses the emotional intensity of reflexive supervision of a reflexive method, Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI), and the necessity of that intensity for insightful analysis of interview data. Two supervisors were involved in the work of validating interpretations in interviews with domestically abusive men. The different...

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a condition marked by a distressing preoccupation with an imaginary or minor defect in a facial feature or a localised part of the body. However, the link between such excessive preoccupation and perceptions of self throughout the life course has rarely been examined. The aim of this study was to examine narrative...

Embargoed by the publisher until December 2010. Full text of this item is not currently available on the LRA. The final published version is available at http://cap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/4/463. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X09344890 Metadata only Recollection of child sexual abuse involves complex issues of agency—both in the past and in the p...

The aim of this article is to explore some of the ways in which British South Asian women survivors of sexual violence (in particular, those who are either British born or have lived in the UK for most of their lives and are fluent English speakers) construct the effects of `culture' within their accounts of sexually violent experiences. We present...