Biography

I have worked in the mental health sector for over 30 years. I have developed national service user networks in England, Scotland and Wales, I have been a chief executive of a national charity, a non-executive director, and vice-chair of a national independent, non-departmental public body. I have recently become a Fellow of the Royal Institute for Public Health.

Currently my focus is on developing a public health approach to mental health, developing public mental health as an academic discipline and taking an evidence-based approach to improving public mental health and primary, secondary and tertiary prevention in mental ill-health.

I have substantial personal experience of using mental health services and have applied this experience and my learning from it in a systematic and productive way to improve outcomes for people who experience mental ill-health. I have been a technical advisor the World Health Organisation, senior mental health advisor to Public Health England, A member of the ethics committee of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics, written a mental health module for the Open University, written, spoken and campaigned for improvements in mental health services. Prior to working in mental health, I wrote economic models of government debt interest for HM Treasury and statistical models of underground water systems for the water industry.