Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh is launching the world’s first master’s degree in Mad Studies. The MSc Mad Studies course is primarily a course for graduates with lived experience of mental health issues. It has been hailed by a leading international Mad Studies academic as the most exciting piece of curriculum development in the last 20 years!

Mad Studies is a recognised academic discipline that explores the knowledge and actions that have grown…

Medical discourse currently dominates as the defining framework for madness in educational praxis. Consequently, ideas rooted in a mental health/illness binary abound in higher learning, as both curriculum content and through institutional procedures that reinforce structures of normalcy. While madness, then, is included in university spaces, this inclusion proceeds in ways that continue to pathologize madness and disenfranchise mad people.

This paper offers Mad…

Earlier this year, UUK published a refreshed version of its strategic framework, Stepchange: mentally healthy universities, calling on universities to prioritise the mental health of their students and staff by taking a whole university approach to mental health.

The Stepchange approach and shared set of principles inform the …

Three sample articles are available on the Asylum website: 

Beyond the Pale – Raza Griffiths 

An Illustrated Mind – Kathryn Watson …

Fast-track mental health social work provider Think Ahead will expand its intake by 60% from next year following a government funding boost of at least £18m.

The Department of Health and Social Care has agreed a contract with Think Ahead to increase the number of trainees for its 2021 and 2022 cohorts from 100 to 160, with…

Health Education England has commissioned 11 videos centered on real-life experience of specialists in the social work field.

See the video playlist.

In February 2020 Health Education England and Skills for Care put on two major conferences about the role and development of mental health social work. 

Download the conference report.

A section of the Skills for Care website has been developed for mental health social workers and AMHPs

View the web pages here.

Social workers are among the largest group of professionals in the mental health workforce and play a key role in the assessment of mental health, addictions and suicide. Most social workers provide services to individuals with mental health concerns, yet there are gaps in research on social work education and training programmes. The objective of this open access scoping review is to examine literature on social work education and training in mental health, addictions and…

With World Mental Health Day this Saturday, a new Nuffield Trust report discusses how more people might be attracted to apply to study mental health nursing, and the reasons why they might currently be less likely to do so.

Co-author Claudia Leone picks out some  key findings.