My own small experience of working alongside colleagues who live with dementia, in a research capacity not focused on their dementia but upon more general issues for older people has led me to have a more optimistic view and to be less afraid should i ever find myself on that road. As some of us on this site will inevitably make the dementia journey ourselves, indeed may already be on it - I would be interested in discussing any or all if the following:

Personal feelings about dementia and how these impact on working/teaching related to it considered within a framework of potential 'toxicity of interaction'

Creating positive, hopeful and celebratory service and learning frameworks to challenge the existing stigma and taboos around dementia and which more generally marginalise and devalue older people

The value of artistic, film and music mediums (NOT THERAPIES!!) in liberating and celebrating the inner worlds of people with dementia

I include Philip Larkin - at his most cynical - yet as usual exploring for some chink of light
- his last line strikes home -
I feel it is for us to take up the challenge while there is still time ...


'....Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning.....

.....An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous, inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out..........'

I want to enter the rooms and see conversely the treasures there!

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Blog Posts

QMU launches the world's first Masters in Mad Studies

Posted by Jill Anderson on December 1, 2020 at 11:50 0 Comments

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…

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Unlearning through Mad Studies: disruptive pedagogical praxis

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 26, 2020 at 19:00 0 Comments

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…

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Stepchange: mentally healthy universities

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:48 0 Comments

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 …

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Think Ahead gets funding to boost its intake.

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:41 0 Comments

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…

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Transforming Mental Health Social Work videos

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:39 0 Comments

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

See the video playlist.

Transforming mental health social work - conference report

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:37 0 Comments

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.

Leadership in mental health social work - web pages

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:33 0 Comments

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

View the web pages here.

Social work education and training in mental health, addictions and suicide: a scoping review protocol

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:29 1 Comment

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…

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Mental health nurse education: perceptions, access and the pandemic

Posted by Jill Anderson on October 16, 2020 at 15:25 0 Comments

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.

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