Category Archives: StaffsPsych Academics

New research explores experiences of talking about suicidality from perspective of people with Bipolar Disorder diagnoses

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Dr Rob Dempsey

Dr Rob Dempsey, Lecturer in Psychology & Course Leader of Staffordshire University’s BSc (Hons) Psychology degree, blogs about a new study published with his PhD Student Rebecca Owen on understanding the experiences of discussing suicidality from the perspective of people with Bipolar Disorder diagnoses:

As part of Rebecca’s PhD research we have been exploring the experiences of suicidal thoughts, feelings and behaviours by people with a Bipolar Disorder diagnosis, with a particular focus on understanding the role of social factors and appraisals of social interactions in suicidality. We have already conducted a qualitative study where we interviewed 20 people with bipolar disorder to explore the sorts of social factors that might enhance or reduce their feelings of suicidality. We published the first part of this study last year on the relationship between social factors and suicidality (click here) and have previously blogged about our findings (click here and here).

As part of these interviews we also asked our participants about their experiences of discussing suicidality with us to help us to better understand if there were any negative or positive effects of discussing suicidality on our participants and to obtain feedback about our research. We identified six themes in our analysis:

(1) talking about suicide was not distressing for the majority of our participants.

(2) negative interview expectations: whilst most participants did not find taking part in the interview to be distressing, many had negative expectations before the interview about how they would cope with talking about personal experiences of suicidality.

(3) personal benefits: discussing suicidality for some participants helped them understand and reflect on their own experiences and, for some, helped with their own personal recovery process.

(4) value of suicide research: most participants felt that research into suicidality was worthwhile and many participants mentioned that they took part as part of a desire to help other people in similar circumstances.

(5) interview advice: for future studies, participants emphasised the importance of having stable moods before discussing suicide-related experiences, and positively commented on our approach  in the interviews to build towards discussing suicide in a gradual and careful manner, and ensuring regular breaks during the interview for the participant.

(6) talking about suicide was difficult: although most of our participants did not find the interview distressing, it is important to note that some did find talking about suicide and reflecting on past negative experiences to be difficult. A couple of our participants were also experiencing some ongoing difficult life circumstances at the time of the interview which appeared to explain why they felt talking about suicide was more difficult for themselves than other participants.

So what did we learn from these interviews? It was clear from conducting this study that many people with personal experience of bipolar disorder valued the opportunity to discuss their own experiences of suicidality, even though it was something difficult to discuss. Anecdotally, we were aware that many people with bipolar disorder experience significant periods of suicidality but may feel unable to discuss such experiences with friends, family or healthcare workers for a variety of reasons. We also found that a number of individuals with bipolar disorder, including those who didn’t end up taking part in our interviews, felt that suicidality in bipolar disorder was a poorly understood phenomenon – so there was a clear interest from individuals with lived experience bipolar disorder in better understanding suicidality. Whilst the majority of our participants did not find discussing suicidality to be distressing in our interviews, some participants did find reflecting on negative experiences to be difficult. The research team were careful to sample only those individuals whose moods were stable (based on a standardised screening interview) and only sampled those individuals who were willing to discuss their experiences with Rebecca.

Based on our analysis of the interviews, and our own experiences of conducting this study, we have made a number of recommendations for best practice when conducting similar interviews in the future. Examples include: (1) ensuring participants have a realistic overview of what the interview will involve during the pre-study consent process; (2) ensuring participants’ mood stability prior to the study and that the risk of suicidality is minimal; (3) providing extensive training in interviewing for the interviewer (including on-going support and training in discussing difficult topics during interviews); as well as appropriate after-study practices like liaising with the participant’s care team if the individual became distressed, follow-up phone-based support as well as post-interview brief mood-boosting techniques (see our paper via the link below for more details).

We are very grateful to our participants for their time and for their very valuable contributions to the study. We are in the process of completing a larger-scale project investigating which of the psychosocial factors identified in these interviews and a review of the past research literature are associated with increased suicidality over time or which help to buffer (reduce) feelings of suicidality. These quantitative studies will allow us to model the psychosocial pathways implicated in suicidality for people with bipolar disorder diagnoses, which may be crucial for developing theory-informed targeted psychological therapies.

Owen, R., Gooding, P., Dempsey, R., & Jones, S. (in press). The Experience of Participation in Suicide Research from the Perspective of Individuals with Bipolar Disorder. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease.

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The Science Centre, home to the Psychology Department

The School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University is a leading School in the UK for Psychology degrees and is situated in the heart of England.  We produce internationally recognized research which is driving knowledge in this area forward and we work with a variety of healthcare providers, charities, international sports teams and private sector organisations.

 

For more information or details of the wide range of Psychology degrees on offer at Staffordshire University please visit our website and our courses page.

New paper exploring the effectiveness of mindfulness for reducing stress in health care professionals

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Dr Amy Burton and Dr Sarah Dean (Senior Lecturers in Health Psychology) have been working in collaboration with an MSc Health Psychology graduate, Catherine Burgess, and researchers at the University of Leeds to explore the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions for reducing stress in health care professionals.

With the proposal of a move to a 7 day Mar16 AB Mindfulness Review 1NHS service hitting the headlines there are growing concerns about the impacts this may have on the quality of patient care. Many health care professionals already feel overworked, stressed and at risk of burnout with a recent survey highlighting that 81% of doctors and specialists are considering early retirement due the impact of stress on their sleep, relationships and physical health (Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, 2015). It is therefore vital that we identify successful ways to reduce stress levels in the caring professions.

Mindfulness is one approach to reducing stress and is a simple form of meditation that encourages the stressed person to focus on the present moment and acknowledge and accept their thoughts and feelings. For this research the team identified and reviewed nine published studies that have tested the value of using mindfulness interventions to reduce stress in health care professionals. The results of this review indicated that mindfulness interventions significantly reduced stress levels in this group.

Mar16 AB Mindfulness Review 2However, there were problems with the studies that indicate the need for more work in this area. Many of the interventions were very time intensive and drop out was common due to work, family and other pressures. This suggests that the mindfulness approach is not always possible within current health care environments without additional support. Furthermore, the quality of some of the reviewed studies was poor and very few explored whether the reduced stress levels reported were maintained long term. The team propose that more high quality research is needed before clear conclusions about the value of this type of intervention for reducing stress in health care professionals can be drawn.

Details of the full paper:

Burton, A. E., Burgess, C., Dean, S., Koutsopoulou, G., & Hugh-Jones, S. (2016). How effective are mindfulness-based interventions for reducing stress among healthcare professionals? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Stress and Health.

The Home of Health Psychology – Staffordshire University

Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health Psychology is a centre of excellence for teaching and research in Health Psychology, and is home to Staffordshire’s BPS Accredited Stage 1 MSc in Health Psychology and BPS Accredited Stage 2 Professional Doctorate in Health Psychology. The Centre for Health Psychology is part of the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise, one of the leading research-active academic schools for Psychology and Sport degrees situated in the heart of England.

Follow the Psychology Department’s latest research news via @StaffsPsych and clicking on the #StaffsPsyRes hashtag.

For further information about Health Psychology courses and research at Staffordshire University please visit the following webpages:

“Reflecting Nature: Psychology & Art”, #StaffsVSS, Thursday 10th March 4-5pm

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The School of Psychology, Sport & Mar16 VSS 2Exercise is pleased to welcome Mark Ware (an award-winning multimedia artist and a Honorary Research Fellow at Brighton and Sussex Medical School) who is giving the Visiting Speaker Series talk with Dr Nichola Street on Thursday 10th March, 4pm, in the LT003 Lecture Theatre in the Ashley Building (Leek Road campus).

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Mark will be speaking about his personal experience of a stroke, how this affected his art, and his recent Arts Council England supported collaborative art/science work with Dr Nikki Street (Lecturer in Psychology at Staffordshire University) – click on the below flyer for more details:

Mar16 VSS Street WareAll staff, students and members of the public are welcome to attend these free Visiting Speaker talks – join in our live tweeting from the talk using the #StaffsVSS event hashtag. We hope to see you there!

The Visiting Speaker seminars are a regular series of free talks hosted by the School of Psychology, Sport & Exercise. Psychologists from across the country are invited to speak at these events to share their research and discuss their findings with staff and students from Staffordshire University. The Visiting Speaker series is also open to anyone from the general public with an interest in psychological research.

No need to book a place – just turn up!

Dr Andrew Edmonds featured on BBC Radio Stoke discussing the “Adele Illusion”

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Dr Andrew Edmonds, Lecturer in Psychology at Staffordshire University, was featured on BBC Radio Stoke discussing the recent “Adele” illusion – listen to Dr Edmonds’ interview via the below link:

BBC Radio Stoke iPlayer: Perry Spiller Show (From 02:27:40)

Read about Dr Edmonds’ explanation of the “Adele Illusion” via our InPsych blog: The Psychology of the “Adele Illusion”

The School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University is a leading School in the UK for Psychology degrees and is situated in the heart of England.  We produce internationally recognized research which is driving knowledge in this area forward and we work with a variety of healthcare providers, charities, international sports teams and private sector organisations.

For more information or details of the wide range of Psychology degrees on offer at Staffordshire University please visit our website and our courses page.

The Psychology of the “Adele Illusion”

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Dr Andrew Edmonds, Lecturer in Psychology at Staffordshire University, talks about the psychology behind the “Adele Illusion” a recent meme being shared via social media:

You may by now have seen Adele as you’ve never seen her before – with her eyes and mouth upside down! Even the biggest admirers of her work would probably agree that this makes her face look a bit distorted. However, turning the whole image upside down makes this disappear. This is a modern version of the Thatcher illusion, first discovered in 1980 by Peter Thompson.

So what is going on here? It is thought (e.g. Edmonds & Lewis, 2007; Thompson, 1980) that inverting the eyes and mouth of a face disrupts information about the spatial relationship between the features of a face (broadly termed ‘configural information’). Research has shown that this configural information is unavailable to us when a whole face is turned upside down.

So, if configural information is unavailable to us, and it is the disturbance of this information which produces the weird appearance in the upright Adele face (with the eyes and mouth inverted), then this may explain why the upturned features disappear when we turn the face upside down! However, more recent research suggests that the illusion may actually be due to a reduced sensitivity to inverted facial features (e.g. Psalta, Young, Thompson and Andrews, 2014).

The same picture of Adele just turned the right way up!

Whatever the explanation, illusions such as this are more than just a bit of fun – they have helped psychologists to identify the sorts of processes that are involved in ‘normal’ upright face processing. It is thought, for example, that we use configural information for the processing of familiar faces but not when processing those which are unfamiliar to us. This is just one of the many differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces which I am interested in understanding in my own research, as well as the question of how faces become familiar to us over time.

Listen to Dr Andrew Edmonds being interviewed by BBC Radio Stoke about the Adele Illusion via: Dr Andrew Edmonds featured on BBC Radio Stoke discussing the “Adele Illusion”

The School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University is a leading School in the UK for Psychology degrees and is situated in the heart of England.  We produce internationally recognized research which is driving knowledge in this area forward and we work with a variety of healthcare providers, charities, international sports teams and private sector organisations.

For more information or details of the wide range of Psychology degrees on offer at Staffordshire University please visit our website and our courses page.

Health Psychology staff, students and graduates present their research at the 2016 MHPN Conference

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Staffordshire University has once again illustrated why we are the #HomeOfHealthPsychology at the Midlands Health Psychology Network Conference. The event, held at Kings Hall in Stoke-on-Trent on the 25th February 2016, was attended by 3 members of staff and over 20 current students and graduates from Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health Psychology. Our Health Psychologists and trainees made a huge impact at the conference presenting in half of the talks and displaying several research posters.

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Our current MSc in Health Psychology students enjoying the MHPN Conference

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Aimee Cooke with her poster at the MHPN Conference

Contributors included: current MSc Students, such as Aimee Cooke who presented her poster on vestibular rehabilitation interventions; Professional Doctorate students, including Katrin Hulme who presented the experience of chronic cough; and graduates, including Rebecca Rushton who presented on her MSc research exploring the effectiveness of personality and the theory of planned behaviour for predicting intentions to attend for cervical screening. Rebecca found the conference a fantastic opportunity to put into practice the skills developed during her time studying for the MSc Health Psychology: “Having the opportunities to develop my presentation skills during the MSc prepared me to present at the conference. Although I was apprehensive it has provided me with invaluable experience”.

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Rebecca Rushton presenting her research in the Kings’ Hall, Stoke

A trip to the conference was built in to the MSc Health Psychology teaching programme to ensure all current students had the opportunity to attend. MSc student Suha Ahmed really enjoyed the experience: “I learnt a lot from the conference and particularly enjoyed learning about all the different areas where Health Psychologists work and conduct research. I also found it useful to watch the presentations and pick up tips to help me develop my own presentation skills and enjoyed having the opportunity to talk to other health psychologists in person and ask questions about their research. I absolutely loved it!”.

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Rebecca Lawrence-Higton presenting her research at the MHPN Conference

The MSc students also valued the opportunity to learn about research conducted by our own Professional Doctorate students. For example, Mike Oliver particularly enjoyed the presentation by current Professional Doctorate student Alison Killen: “I thought Alison’s presentation was really thought provoking.  The points about gratitude as a means to promote wellbeing was interesting, and the ‘gratitude diaries’ sounded like a practical way to take the theory into practice.  Set in the context of ageing and loneliness which are receiving more and more attention, I think the work provides an example of how health psychology could make a big difference in society”.

Some of our current and past Professional Doctorate in Health Psychology students

Some of our current and past Professional Doctorate in Health Psychology students

Our MSc Health Psychology Course Director, Dr Amy Burton, was impressed by the professionalism, confidence and health psychology knowledge shown by our current and past students: “three of my current and graduate project students presented at the conference this year and all were passionate about their research. They used skills developed throughout the MSc to network with, and answer questions from, other health psychologists and trainees from throughout the Midlands – I’m confident they all have an exciting career in Health Psychology ahead of them”

Current MSc Student presentations:

Cooke, A., & Burton, A. Vestibular Rehabilitation: Impact upon Quality of Life and Physical Daily Tasks. A Mixed Methods Approach. (Poster)

Current Professional Doctorate Student presentations:

Killen, A., & Macaskill, A. Using a gratitude intervention to enhance well-being in older adults.

Highton, F., C., O., & Clark-Carter, D. The experience of vision impairment diagnosis and its prognosis on health related quality of life.

Hulme, K., Dogan, S., Parker, S., & Deary, V. “Chronic cough, cause unknown”: A qualitative study of patient perspectives of idiopathic cough.

Sumodhee, D., & Payne, N. Healthy eating beliefs and intentions of mothers and their adult children: An intergenerational transmission perspective. (Poster)

Health Psychology MSc Graduates and Staff presentations:

Higgins, S. J., & Semper, H. The effects of nutrition label format on healthier dietary choices: A forced choice eye-tracking study. (Poster)

Hope, K., & Sherman, S. Perceptions of cervical cancer and screening among older women – A work in progress. (Poster)

Hughes, M., Burton, A., & Dempsey, R. Using photo elicitation to explore quality of life in people with paraplegia and chronic pain.

Rushton, R., & Dean, S. Predicting cervical screening intentions using personality and the Theory of Planned Behaviour

Lawrence-Highton, R., & Burton, A. Looking at things from a positive point of view: an IPA on the exercise experience of individuals with positive body image

The Midlands Health Psychology Network

The MHPN hold a one day conference in February every year which is attended by around 100 members from across the Midlands and is a forum for health psychologists to share clinical and research experiences, information, knowledge and training. Existing members include MSc students, doctorate students, chartered health psychologists based at local NHS sites and regional universities, third sector employees, senior and early career academics, health practitioners and pharmacists. To learn more about the MHPN please visit the website: www.mhpn.co.uk.

The Home of Health Psychology – Staffordshire University

Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health Psychology is a centre of excellence for teaching and research in Health Psychology, and is home to Staffordshire’s BPS Accredited Stage 1 MSc in Health Psychology. The Centre for Health Psychology is part of the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise, one of the leading research-active academic schools for Psychology and Sport degrees situated in the heart of England.

For further information about Health Psychology courses and research at Staffordshire University please visit the following webpages:

BACP Accreditation for Staffordshire’s PG/Prof Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling

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Doreen Fleet, Senior Lecturer in Counselling, reports on a successful accreditation outcome for the Counselling Team at Staffordshire University:

The Counselling Team at Staffordshire University are pleased to announce that the Psychotherapeutic Postgraduate/Professional Diploma in Counselling has now achieved accreditation from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

Jan 16 Counselling Team

Staffordshire University’s Counselling Lecturers

A lot of hard work went into the application process which included a visit by BACP representatives. Their visit included assessing the course documents, observing the facilities and speaking to some of the current staff and students.

Following their visit, the BACP provided written feedback stating “From the submission and the course visit, it is clear that that the course is founded and run on an integrative counselling framework which includes Person-Centred, Cognitive Behavioural, Systemic, Psychodynamic and Attachment Approaches.  This is a well-structured and well-resourced course with excellent accommodation and facilities. The teaching staff are experienced and knowledgeable and the quality of the teaching appears to be excellent. Students appeared to be well engaged and well supported on this course”.

Dr Peter Jones, Head of the School of Psychology, Sport & Exercise, commented: “Its very pleasing to achieved BACP accreditation for two reasons. Firstly it’s a mark of quality for our courses and secondly it reflects the hard work that was put into the accreditation. The process of achieving BACP accreditation is long and robust process and demonstrates the quality of our academic counselling staff”.

The School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University offers a range of qualifications in counselling and psychology. For more information about the wide range of Psychology degrees on offer please visit our website and our courses page.

Are you interested in studying for a Counselling qualification?

Staffordshire University offers counselling courses ranging from Foundation Degrees with local partner colleges, undergraduate degrees (including a British Psychological Society accredited BSc Psychology and Counselling degree) and postgraduate counselling qualifications at our Stoke-on-Trent City Campus:

A Successful Evening of Weird and Wonderful Psychology!

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The Psychology department at Staffordshire University organised a successful community event, “Weird and Wonderful Psychology”, hosted in the University’s £30 million Science Centre in December 2015. Dr Robert Dempsey and Dr Nichola Street report on a highly entertaining “Weird & Wonderful Psychology” event:

cropped-Dec-15-WW-Psychology-Plasma.jpgOur event showcased some of the more unusual, fantastic and quite odd aspects of Psychology to an audience of visitors from the general public, students from local sixth form colleges, as well as staff and students from Staffordshire University. The event including a range of live demonstrations featuring the industry standard equipment used by staff and students in the Psychology department’s teaching and research activities.

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A Busy Science Centre

These demonstrations included the use facial ageing software to show visitors the potential effects of alcohol and smoking on facial appearance (as used in our health psychology research), using goggles to show the effects of macular degeneration and alcohol use on performance on simple day-to-day tasks, mindfulness-boosting activities, and whether we can use physiological measures of the stress response to detect when people are lying.

We even subjected the Head of the School of Psychology, Sport & Exercise, Dr Peter Jones, to our Human Lie Detector study – who was ably caught out by our Dr Gemma Hurst’s skills at detecting when he was lying!

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In addition to demonstrations by our Psychology lecturers, the event also included a number of demonstrations devised and performed by our Second Year Undergraduate Psychology students. Our students were tasked with designing and pitching their Weird & Wonderful demonstration as part of their Social Psychology module seminars, with the winners demonstrating their activity live on the night including delivering a short talk in front of our invited guests.

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Our “MindControllers” Student Group – investigating obedience and conformity!

Needless to say, our students did a fantastic job of performing their demonstrations on the night, including explaining how their activity demonstrates psychological phenomena to our invited guests. Our students demonstrated how we can unknowingly change our behaviours to authority figures, whether particular personality traits make for better leaders, how we can conform to perceived norms and obey authority figures, the “Chameleon Effect” when we change our expressions to match those of other people during “selfies”, through film showing how we can’t always see things changing in front of our eye known as “Inattentional Blindness“, and the power of stereotyping other people based on their appearance (see below for pictures).

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The Great British Psychology Bake-Off!

As part of the evening’s activities, a Psychology bake-off competition was held which featured assorted cakes and baked goods demonstrating various aspects of Psychology. Including Sigmund Freud Mince Pies, a Brain cake, the Big 5 Personality Traits, The Muller-Lyer Optical Illusion, gingerbread people demonstrating Twin Studies and Gender Stereotyping, as well as a unique set of cakes demonstrating a positive correlation (and a statistical outlier!) which were voted the winner of the Bake Off!

Dec15 WW Cakes GridVoting & Talks on Weird & Wonderful Psychology!

The event culminated in the attendees voting for the best student demonstration from the evening – with The Mind Controller’s winning first place with their demonstration exploring how individuals’ behaviour can be influenced and exploring the psychological fields of conformity and obedience. The event also featured a series of short talks by lecturers from the department on their research interests relating to the weirder and unusual aspects of Psychology, including Dr Daniel Jolley on “Climate Change is a Hoax! The Psychology of Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories”, Dr Andrew Edmonds on “Jesus in Toast – Why People see Faces in Unusual Places”, and Mel Hall on “Who You Gonna Call! Ghostbusters? The Psychology of the Paranormal”. All talks were well received by the audience and showcased some of the interesting and exciting research happening in the department.

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Mel Hall’s Talk on Parapsychology

Mel even gave a live demonstration of her psychic abilities by asking the audience to guess which number she was thinking of, with the majority correctly and spookily guessing “7”! Although there was a slight twist – our staff and students kept repeating the number 7 during the earlier demonstrations, so we’re not completely sure whether our colleague Mel is really psychic despite her claims otherwise!

The evening was a fantastic and very enjoyable event, and we were very pleased to see our guests getting enthused about Psychology and very proud of our students who presented their demonstrations in an engaging and professional manner.

Judy David, Academic Group Lead for Undergraduate Psychology at Staffordshire University, commented: “I was proud of how enthusiastically students and staff approached this event. So many people contributed, and it was great fun to be able to show off some of the more strange aspects of Psychology to both the public and our own students. There were some very interesting and stimulating activities and talks. I’m already looking forward to next year!”

Dr Peter Jones, Head of the School of Psychology, Sport & Exercise, said: “I really love our Weird and Wonderful event. It’s great how it allows our students to showcase the importance of Psychology and how touches every part of our lives, plus it also involves the wider public as Staffordshire University is such an important part of our community”.

The School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University is a leading School in the UK for Psychology degrees and is situated in the heart of England.  We produce internationally recognized research which is driving knowledge in this area forward and we work with a variety of healthcare providers, charities, international sports teams and private sector organisations.

For more information or details of the wide range of Psychology degrees on offer at Staffordshire University please visit our website and our courses page.

New Research into Stereotypes of Ageing funded by Staffordshire University

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Dr Amy Burton

Dr Amy Burton and Dr Sarah Dean, Senior Lecturers in Psychology, have been successful in securing funding from the Staffordshire University REF2020 research scheme to explore ageing stereotypes. Amy blogs on their research plans:

In the UK there are currently 10 million people aged 65 and above and it is predicted that this will reach 19 million by 2050 (Cracknell, 2010). Average life expectancy has increased steadily but healthy life expectancy has not matched this, meaning additional demands are being placed on services such as the NHS (Cracknell, 2010). It is recognised both within academic literature (e.g. Reed, Stanley, & Clarke, 2004) and in the work of charities (e.g. Age UK, 2013) that research is crucial to understanding the experiences of older adults in order to break down the barriers preventing them from active participation in society and healthy ageing. Such research will have a substantial impact on the health and well-being of older adults.

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Dr Sarah Dean

Dr Burton’s research into barriers and facilitators to physical activity in older people with sight loss highlighted an important psychological concept in need of further exploration (Burton, Clancy, & Cowap, n.d. Under Review). During focus groups participants frequently used examples of negative self-directed stereotypes to justify reduced participation in physical activity (e.g. ‘Young adults, rather than 70 or 80 year olds […] they are the ones that really need all of the exercise and can actually do it’). Stereotype Embodiment Theory proposes that age stereotypes can be internalised by individuals across the lifespan (Levy, 2009). Such self-directed stereotypes have been implicated in reductions in cognitive functioning and physical health (Levy, 2003).  Furthermore, evidence suggests that attributing illness and functional decline to old age and holding the belief that ‘to be old is to be ill’ is associated with negative health outcomes and reductions in health maintenance behaviours (Beyer, Wolff, Warner, Schüz, & Wurm, 2015; Stewart, Chipperfield, Perry, & Weiner, 2012).

Dr Burton and Dr Dean will be using the REF2020 funding to further explore and define the ageing stereotypes held by people living in the UK and how self-directed stereotypes impact on health and wellbeing outcomes for older people.

Drs Burton and Dean are members of Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health Psychology, a centre of excellence for teaching and research in health psychology, and are course leaders for Staffordshire’s BPS Accredited Stage 1 MSc in Health Psychology. The Centre for Health Psychology is part of the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise, one of the leading research-active academic schools for Psychology and Sport degrees situated in the heart of England.

For further information about Health Psychology courses and research at Staffordshire University please visit the following webpages:

 

Me-Therapy: A new online mindfulness-based resource for people dealing with cancer

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Dr Rachel Povey

Trainee Health Psychologist Szilvia Vas together with her supervisor Dr Rachel Povey, Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology at Staffordshire University and member of the Centre for Health Psychology, are recruiting participants to trial their new mindfulness-based online resource “Me-Therapy”.

Me-therapy was originally conceptualized by Miss Vas and developed together with Dr Povey as a resource for improving body image and managing physical changes associated with cancer. The trial is being conducted jointly with CancerCare US, and is free for anyone who would like to take part.

“Participating in this online program is a unique opportunity for anyone facing cancer, as it gives men and women the chance to work through some of the body-image changes that they might be struggling with during or after treatment,” says CancerCare Social Work Internship Programme Director, Maria Chi. “The program provides tools to help people become more mindful of the present moment and how their thinking patterns directly affect what they’re feeling.”

Dec15 MeTherapy RP Blog

www.me-therapy.org

Me-therapy was inspired through Miss Vas’ work at the Douglas MacMillan Hospice in Stoke-on-Trent. The programme includes video clips, audio resources and mindfulness exercises to teach participants how to challenge unhelpful thoughts and behaviours that characterize negative body image. Participants are also provided with direct email support as they are provided with trained “body image buddies” to better address users’ unique needs.

Participants must be 18 years of age or older. To register, visit www.Me-therapy.org

For more details of this trial, please visit the Cancer Research UK website.

Staffordshire University is home to the Centre for Health Psychology, a centre of excellence for teaching and research in health psychology. For further information about Health Psychology courses and research at Staffordshire University please visit the following webpages: