The 12th of January 2018 is a day that I very much hope will be remembered: the day that the Power Threat Meaning Framework was launched. Supported by the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology, it was written by a group of respected critical thinkers, including psychologists and service-users. For me, the launch was... Continue Reading →
The United Nations and Mental Health
In June 2017, a report was read (download it here, it's free) to the United Nations on the subject of mental health. This was the third annual report of the UN Special Rapporteur for health, or to give his full title, The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone on the Enjoyment of the... Continue Reading →
Luddite Health Promotion
Happy New Year from the Critical Mental Health Nurses' Network! As we begin to plan our year ahead, we are delighted to present a new piece by Ed Lord which asks what it would mean to be Luddite Health Promoters. We hoped that this blog would help us pull together the strands of a critical mental... Continue Reading →
12 Questions about Record-Keeping
Kris Deering is a lecturer in mental health nursing at the University of the West of England in Bristol. He has 15 years experience working in practice over various sectors, including as a senior practitioner within an intensive team and specialising in care for adolescents experiencing psychosis in an Early Intervention team. A key area of interest is the various effects of neoliberalism on... Continue Reading →
Changing Mental Health Policy and Practice for Changing Times, by Peter Beresford
This post is one we are particularly delighted to share. We have said right from the start of the Network that ‘the critical is political’ and this is a highly political piece. It is a talk given by Professor Peter Beresford at the Mersey Care conference in Liverpool last Friday. The conference was called Service User's... Continue Reading →
Critical Perspectives in Mental Health Nurse Education
This is the 3rd of the workshop reports from our recent conference. Here, Jim Chapman and Anne Felton summarise and reflect on the discussions that they facilitated in a workshop designed to help people think about MH nurse education. There were other parts of the day in which people considered education too, and as the... Continue Reading →
The Recovery Star meets the UnRecovery Star
The following post was contributed by Jonathan Gadsby. The Mental Health Recovery Star (below) is a widely used tool which aims to provide a map of a multifaceted mental health recovery and a measurement of progress. It was designed by Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise in 2007, a group based in the world of outcome measurement... Continue Reading →
The future of mental health nursing: are we barking up the wrong tree?
Dear CMHNN, Those of you who attended the conference in Birmingham may have met Mick McKeown, who has been a supporter of the Network since its early days (that's right, several months ago!). He has a new co-written article (reference and PDF below) published in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing which we know will... Continue Reading →
Legalised discrimination? Is the Mental Health Act a fundamental impediment to developing better ways of responding to human suffering?
This is the second of the write-ups of the conference workshops from Birmingham in Sept 2015. We are very grateful to Gary Sidley for his continued support of the Network and for the strong leadership he has provided to think about the Mental Health Act. His session was very well attended. Please feel free to comment, ask... Continue Reading →
Escaping Psy-Dominance: Ideas from Critical and Community Psychology
One of the four workgroups at the Birmingham conference in Sept 2015 was by Mel Wiseman-Lee and Jonathan Gadsby, titled 'Escaping Psy-Dominance: Ideas from Critical and Community Psychology'. (Other session summaries will be available soon). The session aimed to discuss the critical voices within psychology and introduce the network of recent developments there. Also, to generate... Continue Reading →
Critical Mental Health Nurses' Network 