Authors

Jen Kilyon followed a career in education with involvement as a family member in the mental health system. She now works as a trainer and consultant with organisations such as the Department of Health, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Mental Health Trusts and Higher Education Institutions.

Theresa Smith worked in education and health for 25 years, and currently works in a variety of mental health settings, with service users and carers, as well as training mental health workers. She has contributed to local and national research programmes for mental health service improvement, and is co-founder of the…

Hannah Walker is the Chairperson of the Dorset Mental Health Forum which, amongst other things, offers advocacy services and promotes recovery and wellbeing.

Dr Alec Grant is now an independent scholar, having retired from his position as Reader in Narrative Mental Health in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Brighton in May 2017. He qualified as a mental health nurse in the mind-1970s, and went on to study psychology, social…

Francis Biley (1958-2012) was Associate Professor at the University of Bournemouth. He had particular methodological interests in historiography, autoethnography, unitary appreciative inquiry and using the arts and humanities in health care. Clinically, his interests were in the built care environment, and in the service user movement in mental health and…

Diana Rose is a social scientist and has also been a user of mental health services all her adult life. After a very difficult time in a lecturing job, followed by five years as a 'community mental patient', she brought her two identities together to do user-led research. This was…

Alison Faulkner works as a freelance researcher, trainer and consultant in the mental health field. She has over 20 years experience in social research, and has worked for Rethink, The Mental Health Foundation, the National Centre for Social Research, Mind and The Sainsbury Centre. Alison is herself a mental health service…

Angela Sweeney was part of her local survivor movement as a teenager and young adult, and conducted her first survivor research project as an undergraduate student in 1998.  Sometime after graduating, she joined the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health to work on a study of the British Survivor Movement (On…