I have worked as a consultant in the NHS, privately, and in national leadership roles. I have been researching the nature of suicide and suicide bereavement for over 16 years. My focus is on applying psychoanalytic/psychodynamic concepts to complex topics in mental health care and psychiatry. The aim is to encourage open, honest dialogue....I am currently thinking about the nature of self-harm, prejudice and discrimination in those diagnosed with a personality disorder, assisted dying/suicide and the defensive processes we use as clinicians to deny our own vulnerability. I am a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and group analyst.

Recent Papers

Mourning and mental illness
The mourning process and its importance in mental illness: a psychoanalytic understanding of psychiatric diagnosis and classification
BJPsych article of the month March 2024
Clinicians' experiences 
Effects of patient suicide on psychiatrists: survey of experiences and support required
Cambridge University Press April 2019
The nature of suicide and the impact on the bereaved
The 8 'truths' about suicide

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Understanding the psychodynamics of the pathway to suicide
​The impact of suicide on
​the mind of the bereaved
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Supporting mental health staff following the death of a patient by suicide
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Book

Seminars in the Psychotherapies (Second Edition)
'It is a full and wide-ranging book that can be used for reference or quiet study... it also includes throughout its pages a rich seam of personal reflection, literary quotations, on-the-hoof clinical anecdotes and case studies that help bring things to life.'
The book 'provides refreshing views of modern-day psychotherapy that are firmly rooted in principles psychoanalysis.'

Current Reccomendations

Other Articles, videos and podcasts
You don't have to be mad to work here by Dr Benji Waterhouse
Humane, hilarious, and heart-breaking, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here is an enlightening and darkly comic window into the world of psychiatry.
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Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality.
Working in the Dark by Donald Campbell and Rob Hale
Working in the Dark focuses on the authors’ understanding of an individual’s pre-suicide state of mind, based on their work with many suicidal individuals, with special attention to those who attempted suicide while in treatment.

The book explores how to listen to a suicidal individual’s history, the nature of their primary relationships and their conscious and unconscious communications.
Experiences and support needs of psychiatrists under investigation
BJPsych
Valdo Calocane: Navigating the complexities of blame in the wake of tragedy: a call for realistic expectations of mental healthcare
BMJ
​Experiences and support needs of consultant psychiatrists following a patient-perpetrated homicide
BJPsych
Parity of esteem within the biopsychosocial model: is psychiatry still a psychological profession?
BJPsych
​Psychiatrists’ Experience of a Peer Support Group for Reflecting on Patient Suicide and Homicide: A Qualitative Study
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022
​The Psychodynamics of Self Harm 
BJPsyche Advances
The 'impossibility' of working in the current NHS Podcast
The Tavistock Institute 
Dr Rachel Gibbons