In the spotlight
‘RESEARCH IS MORE LIKELY TO CHANGE SYSTEMS AND PRACTICES WHEN DELIVERED WITH EXPERTS BY EXPERIENCE’
Dr Vanessa Pinfold is co-founder of the McPin Foundation, a UK-based mental health charity working globally to develop peer research, and patient and public involvement in research. She also co-chairs the UK Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders and is a trustee of Mental Health Research UK.
BULLETIN BOARD
■ BACP’s International Research Conference takes place online and in person in Birmingham on 17 and 18 May. Co-hosted with Birmingham Newman University, the theme for this year’s conference is ‘Enriching research, practice and policy with lived experience’. It’s a fantastic way to find out about research that’s going on in the field, contribute to your own CPD, and network. For more information, see www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ research/conference ■ All members have free online access to the BACP research journal, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research , as well as the EBSCO information database, both excellent resources if you’re looking to scope the research literature on a particular topic. To help you make the most of them, start by reading the Good Practice in Action resource How to do a literature search (GPiA 015). You can find this here: www.bacp.co.uk/gpia ■ The BACP Postgraduate Research Forum now includes a programme of guest speakers, including Mick Cooper, John McLeod, Sofie Bager-Charleson and Divine Charura. The forum is open to all postgraduate students engaged in research projects as part of their studies. As well as the guest speakers there are monthly online presentations from members on the progress of their projects. www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/research/ bacp-postgraduate-research-forum
Can you tell us a bit about your research? My work with McPin began in 2007 when I set up the charity with my husband, fi rst giving micro-grants to promising projects that focused on mental health, and then from 2013 establishing a mental health research team. McPin has grown from six to over 20 sta ff in the past 10 years, and has developed teams focused on peer research, public involvement in research, science communication/impact and in fl uence, and wellbeing support/operations. Our mission remains to transform mental health research by centring the expertise that comes from lived and living experience of mental health issues. What motivated you to undertake this work? At university several people I knew lost their lives to suicide, and many of my friends struggled with their mental health, as did I. As an undergraduate I became interested in health geography, and I was fortunate to be o ff ered a PhD place to work with
Nottingham mental health services. That was more than 30 years ago, and started my mental health services research career. Since then my interest and commitment have grown, meeting many people along the way whose struggles show how little we know and how important it is to provide better mental health support, from young to old. What do you hope the Foundation will achieve? I am very aware that research is often slow to change systems and practices, but it is more likely to do so when delivered with experts by experience. I hope our work can continue to showcase important issues that desperately need policy and practice changes, such as inequalities and mental health, stigma and discrimination. On a more granular level, our work currently explores topics including new support options, such as virtual reality for psychosis, supported self-help digital platforms, and applications addressing sleep and youth mental health.
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