Esther Ansah-Asamoah completed an MSc Natural Sciences degree at Lancaster University, with a focus in Psychology, Chemistry, Microbiology and Biomedicine. Esther is particularly interested in mental health care within the black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community and hopes to be able to work in the mental health sector in the future.

Annie Bartlett is Professor of Offender Healthcare at St George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London. She worked clinically as a forensic psychiatrist in secure hospital and other settings, most recently in HMP/YOI Holloway prior to its closure. Her research background is in social anthropology; her doctoral thesis was published as a monograph on the lives of staff and patients in high secure hospital care. She was Clinical Director of Central and North West London NHS Trust’s Offender Care services in London and the South East until 2016. Her research career has been varied and has included investigation into the relationship between the LGBT community and psychiatry.

Arnon Bentovim is a child and adolescent psychiatrist. He trained at the Maudsley Hospital and as a psychoanalyst and family therapist. He was a consultant at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, an honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Child Health University of London and is a visiting professor at the Royal Holloway University of London. At Great Ormond Street, he shared responsibility for child protection, initiated the first sexual abuse assessment and treatment service and was a member of the group who developed family therapy in the UK. He established the Child and Family Practice and the Child and Family Training organisation.

Peter Beresford OBE is Professor of Citizen Participation at the University of Essex, Co-Chair of Shaping Our Lives, the national disabled people’s and service users’ organisation and network, and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Brunel University London. He is a long-term user of mental health services and has a long-standing background of involvement in issues of participation as a writer, researcher, activist and teacher. He is a co-editor of Madness, Violence and Power: A Critical Collection (2019) and The Routledge Handbook of Service User Involvement in Human Services Research and Education (2020).

G. E. Berrios is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Cambridge University where he occupied the first chair of the Epistemology of Psychiatry. He read Philosophy, Psychology and Physiology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University and trained in Neurology and Psychiatry at the then Oxford United Hospitals. He is Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the  Royal College of Psychiatrists. In 1989, with Roy Porter, he founded the international journal History of Psychiatry, of which he remains the editor. His research has centred on the psychiatric complications of neurological disease and the history, structure and epistemological power of descriptive psychopathology. In 2020, ex-students and other members of the Cambridge Epistemology Group published a Festschrift in his honour.

Allan Beveridge is History and Humanities Editor of the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Editor of Psychiatry in Pictures and joint Book Review Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry. He is an honorary fellow at the Department of the History of Medicine, Edinburgh University. He has written extensively on the history of psychiatry and on the medical humanities. Until his retirement, he was a consultant psychiatrist at the Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline.

Kamaldeep Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry University of Oxford, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at East London NHS Foundation Trust, and Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Psychiatry. He studied Pharmacology (BSc) at University College London (UCL) and Medicine (MBBS) at United Medical and Dental Schools of Guys and St Thomas’ (now King’s College), qualifying in 1988. He holds postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry, mental health studies, epidemiology and psychotherapy. His first consultant appointment was in 1999, followed in 2000 and 2003 by consultant/senior lecturer and consultant/professorial posts in East London Foundation Trust and Queen Mary University of London.

Emily Blackshaw is employed at Mind as CEO Office and Business Development Team Assistant. She has been undertaking a PhD at the University of Roehampton since 2016, carrying out a psychometric evaluation of the Young Person’s Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (YP-CORE). She studied Psychology at the University of Warwick, before working for three years at the Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Most of her prior research experience involves quantitative research designs with a focus on community-based projects and adolescent mental health. Her research publications include contributions to child and adolescent mental health and health services and delivery research.

Jed Boardman is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry and Senior Policy Adviser at the Centre for Mental Health. Throughout his career, he has worked mainly in social and community psychiatry and was Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley Trust until 2016. He is now the lead for Social Inclusion at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, where he advises on employment, poverty, welfare reform, personalisation and recovery.

Nick Bouras is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. He worked as consultant psychiatrist for thirty years initially at Guy’s hospital and then at the South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust where he also became clinical director. His research has centred on the psychiatric ward environments, community psychiatry and the mental health of people with intellectual disabilities. He led the research programme in one of the first community mental health centres in the UK and played an important role in the development of the first community-based mental health service in the UK for people with intellectual disabilities. He systematically studied the re-provision of services, following the closure of institutions. He initiated and developed the Estia Centre, an innovative concept combining clinical services, training and research. He has published extensively in community psychiatry and mental health aspects of people with intellectual disabilities including the textbook Psychiatric and Behavioral Disorders in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (2016) and an autobiographical account: Reflections on the Challenges of Psychiatry in the UK and Beyond (2017). Several of his publications have been translated into different languages.

Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and Fellow of the British Academy. She is the Principal Investigator on an interdisciplinary Wellcome Trust–funded project entitled SHaME or Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters (shame.bbk.ac.uk). She is the prize-winning author of fourteen books, including histories on modern warfare, military medicine, psychology and psychiatry, the emotions, what it means to be human, and rape, as well as more than 100 articles in academic journals. Her most recent book is The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers (2014). Her books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish and Greek.

Liz Brosnan has been a user/survivor activist and researcher for more than twenty years. In 2013, she completed a PhD in medical sociology examining the dynamics surrounding user involvement/engagement. Her research interests also include psychosocial disability rights and the UNCRPD, survivor epistemology and, latterly, change methodologies in mental health services. After ten years in academia as a survivor researcher, she has returned to practise in Irish services to enhance the inclusion of the voices of lived experience in service planning design and evaluation.

Tom Burns is Professor Emeritus of Social Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. His research was predominantly health services research in community psychiatry, particularly complex interventions. He has published 6 books and more than 300 papers, including randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of case management, vocational rehabilitation and Community Treatment Orders (CTOs). These CTOs appear to be utterly ineffectual but are currently being introduced worldwide. His book Our Necessary Shadow: The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry (2014) is on psychiatry for the general reader. He was awarded the CBE in 2006 for services to mental health care.

Peter Byrne is a consultant liaison psychiatrist at the Royal London Hospital in east London. He graduated with a master’s degree in film studies from University College Dublin in 1994 and taught film studies there for eight years. He has written many articles on the representation of people with mental health problems in film and programmed the UK’s first mental health film festival in January 2002 at Riverside Studios, London. He also helped to programme films for the Reel Madness Film Festival (London, 2004) and for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (www.mhfestival.org) beginning in 2007. His principal research interest is the stigma of mental health problems and the effects of prejudice and discrimination. He was appointed Director of Public Education for the Royal College of Psychiatrists for five years from 2007; in 2013, he became RCPsych Associate Registrar for public mental health.

Peter Carpenter is Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust. He was a consultant psychiatrist in Learning Disabilities for Hanham Hall Hospital for ten years before it became the last large hospital to close in the Bristol area. He has had a lifelong interest in history, saving the records of the psychiatric hospitals of Leicester before collecting the surviving records for intellectual disability in Avon. He was a long-term trustee of Glenside Hospital Museum and has written extensively on various aspects of the history of psychiatry and intellectual disability. His current interests are the private madhouses of Avon and the work of the Burdens.

Peter Carter OBE is an independent health care consultant and visiting professor at Anglia Ruskin, Canterbury Christchurch, Chester and King’s College universities. He is a registered nurse and has a PhD and MBA from the University of Birmingham. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners as well as an ad eundem of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was awarded the inaugural medal of the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2011. He is the former CEO of the Central and North West London NHS Trust and the RCN.

Hedy Cleaver is Professor Emeritus at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Her experience as a social worker and child psychologist informs her research on vulnerable children and their families and the impact of professional interventions. The guiding principle underpinning her work is a desire to improve the quality of life for children living in circumstances that place them at risk of abuse and neglect. Recent research focuses on perinatal death and the support available for grieving parents. Findings from her research have impacted UK policy, in respect to children and families, for more than thirty years.

Christopher C. H. Cook is Professor of Spirituality, Theology and Health and Director of the Centre for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Durham University. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, with research doctorates in medicine and theology. Ordained as a priest in 2001, he is an honorary chaplain for Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. His books include Spirituality, Theology and Mental Health (2013), Spirituality and Narrative in Psychiatric Practice: Stories of Mind and Soul (edited with Andrew Powell and Andrew Sims, 2016), Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine (2018) and Christians Hearing Voices (2020).

Tom K. J. Craig is Emeritus Professor of Social Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College, London, and past president of the World Association of Social Psychiatry. He qualified in medicine at the University of the West Indies and trained in psychiatry in Nottingham, UK. He was appointed as Professor of Community Psychiatry in 1990, based in the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and was the psychiatric lead for the closure of Tooting Bec Hospital. His research includes services for first episode psychosis and current studies of the AVATAR therapy for auditory hallucinations.

Ilana Crome is Emerita Professor of Addiction Psychiatry at Keele University, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust and Visiting Professor at St George’s University of London. Ilana has experience in providing comprehensive addiction services for all substances across the life cycle and played an active role in the addiction field in service development, research, training and policy. She has published extensively and had many national and international leadership roles, including Chair of Trustees of Drug Science. Her ongoing research interests in addiction include mental and physical comorbidity, decision-making, suicide and training for health professionals.

Paul Farmer has been Chief Executive of Mind, the leading mental health charity working in England and Wales since May 2006. He is Chair of the NHS England Independent Oversight and Advisory Group, which brings together health and care leaders and experts to oversee the current mental health long-term plan for the NHS in England. He co-authored Thriving at Work (2017) for the government, setting out how to transform mental health in workplaces. Paul is a commissioner at Historic England. He has an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of East London, is an honorary fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists and was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours 2016.

Sarah-Jane Fenton is a lecturer in mental health policy in the Institute for Mental Health (IMH) at the University of Birmingham. Sarah-Jane completed her doctoral research in 2016, graduating with a dual award degree from the University of Birmingham (2016) and the University of Melbourne (2017). The PhD used a comparative study design to explore mental health policy and service delivery for adolescents and young people aged sixteen to twenty-five years of age in the UK and Australia. Sarah-Jane has particular expertise in youth, adolescence, mental health, health policy, realist and qualitative research.

Jon Glasby is Professor of Health and Social Care in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Birmingham. A qualified social worker by background, Jon specialises in research, teaching, consultancy and policy advice around joint working between health and social care, personalisation and community care services. He has previously served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Integrated Care and is currently a non-executive director of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and of the Birmingham Children’s Trust. Jon is the author of numerous health and social care textbooks, including Mental Health: Policy and Practice (2015).

Lawrence O. Gostin is University Professor, Georgetown University’s highest academic rank, and Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law. He directs the World Health Organization (WHO) Center on National and Global Health Law. He is Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University and Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Before leaving for Harvard, he was Legal Director of Mind, where he worked on mental health law reform and advocacy for the rights of persons with mental disabilities.

Kevin Gournay is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. He is a registered nurse, registered psychologist and chartered scientist with wide-ranging clinical, research and training experience. He is an honorary professor at the Matilda Centre, University of Sydney, where he continues to pursue his interest in comorbidity. He was appointed CBE in the New Year’s Honours 1999. He is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a fellow of the Royal College of Nursing and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He was USA Psychiatric Nurse of the year in 2004.

John Gunn is Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, King’s College London, Maudsley Hospital graduate and foundation member, one-time Chairman of the Faculty of Forensic Psychiatry, Honorary Fellow 2010 and currently elected trustee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. As consultant forensic psychiatrist at the Maudsley, 1972–2002, he developed a large postgraduate teaching scheme for forensic psychiatry. His research has included epidemiological studies of prisoners, the workings of Grendon Prison and violence studies. He is Founder of the Effra Trust for ex-prisoner patients and Co-founder of the Ghent Group for European Psychiatrists. He was also a member of the Parole Board from 2006 to 2015, the co-editor of the textbook Forensic Psychiatry: Clinical, Legal and Ethical Issues (2014) and Founder of Crime in Mind, a research charity.

Jamie Hacker Hughes is a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist. After a commission in the Army and five years in sales and marketing, Jamie studied at University College London (UCL), Cambridge and Surrey universities. After five years in the NHS, he returned to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), becoming a defence consultant advisor and head of clinical psychology before establishing the Veterans and Families Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. Jamie has been both British Psychological Society (BPS) President and Minister Provincial for Europe of the Third Order Franciscans. He is a committed campaigner against mental health stigma and is very open about his own twenty-year experience of bipolar disorder.

John Hall is Visiting Professor of Mental Health and Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Medical Humanities, Oxford Brookes University. He was formerly Head of NHS Clinical Psychology Services for Oxfordshire and Senior Clinical Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Oxford University. He was Consultant Adviser in Clinical Psychology to the Department of Health for six years and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Psychological Society (BPS) Professional Practice Board in 2011. He was the lead editor for Clinical Psychology in Britain: Historical Perspectives, published by the BPS in 2015, and is currently writing on the histories of the mental health professions.

Ahmed Hankir is Academic Clinical Fellow in General Adult Psychiatry at King’s College London and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Research in association with Cambridge University. His research interests include global and Muslim mental health and pioneering and evaluating innovative programmes that challenge mental health–related stigma. He is passionate about public engagement and education and empowering and dignifying people with lived/living experience of mental health difficulties. He is the recipient of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Foundation Doctor and Core Psychiatric Trainee of the Year awards.

David Healy is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, Canada, having previously been a professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff and Bangor universities. His historical work has centred on the discovery of physical treatments in mental health, the problems these treatments can cause and methods to evaluate treatments, leading to publications such as The Antidepressant Era (1999) and The Creation of Psychopharmacology (2004).

Louise Hide is a social historian of psychiatry and its institutions. She is a Wellcome Trust Fellow in Medical Humanities (Grant Reference: 205417/Z/16/Z) and based in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research project is titled ‘Cultures of Harm in Residential Institutions for Long-term Adult Care, Britain 1945–1980s’. She co-edited a special issue of the Social History of Medicine (2018) and has published on the histories of pain, delusions and institutional cultures. Her first monograph, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914, was published in 2014.

Claire Hilton trained in psychiatry in Manchester and was a consultant old age psychiatrist in North West London from 1998 to 2017. Her MD was on psychiatric complications of sickle cell disease, with the data collected in Jamaica. Her PhD was on the history of old age psychiatry in England, c.1940–89. Her published work includes three history monographs as well as academic papers on history, policy, old age psychiatry and transcultural psychiatry. She is currently Historian in Residence at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Peter Hughes is an NHS consultant psychiatrist at Springfield University Hospital, London. He is Chair of the London Division of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He founded the Volunteering and International Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has worked as a mental health specialist for the past fifteen years globally, including in humanitarian emergencies and refugee settings. He has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO), other UN organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

George Ikkos is Honorary Fellow and Chair of the History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group (HoPSIG) of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He was the first president of the Pain Medicine Section at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) and President of the Psychiatry Section as well as Honorary Visiting Research Professor at London South Bank University. Working with Barnet Voice for Mental Health from 1999 to 2006, he pioneered consistent co-production of interview and communication skills in UK postgraduate psychiatric training through a weekly seminar and clinical simulation workshop. This also had a profound impact on his own practice. The year 2021 marks forty years of work for the NHS, where he continues to practise as a consultant liaison psychiatrist at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He has been the clinical lead in the development of the Stanmore Nursing Assessment of Psychological Status (SNAPS); medical advisor to the Scotsman Fringe First award-winning play The Shape of the Pain, which was directed by an expert by experience; and delivered invited plenary lectures at meetings of the British Pain Society and the International Association for the Study of Pain. A qualified group analytic psychotherapist, he has published on psychosomatic, psychodynamic, interpersonal and social aspects of psychiatry.

Edgar Jones is Professor of the History of Medicine and Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. He originally studied history, completing a doctorate at Nuffield College, Oxford, but subsequently trained in clinical psychopathology at Guy’s Hospital and as a psychodynamic psychotherapist. He has written on shell shock, somatic symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the cultural representation of psychiatric casualties and moral injury experienced by veterans. He is the course director of King’s MSc in War and Psychiatry.

Doreen Joseph is a BAME survivor. She has been a campaigner, advocate, trainer, lecturer and writer on race, mental health and faith. She worked for Rethink, Mental Health Foundation, Mind, Sainsbury’s Centre for Mental Health, Mellow Campaign and Social Action for Health. She co-founded and ran her own advocacy service (charity) Black & Ethnic Minorities Advocacy & Counselling Service. She was a BAME representative on London Clinical Network for Mental Health and a member of NHS England Black Voices Network. She was a Race Equality Cultural Competence trainer in East London. She has published widely and is passionate about improving mental experiences for BAME people.

Cornelius Katona is Medical Director of the Helen Bamber Foundation – a human rights charity that works with asylum seekers and refugees – and is Honorary Professor in the Division of Psychiatry at University College London (UCL). He is the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ lead on Refugee and Asylum Mental Health. He was a member of the committee that recently updated NICE guidelines on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and written or edited sixteen books. In 2019, he was awarded the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Honorary Fellowship, the College’s highest honour, for his ‘outstanding service to psychiatry’.

Stephen Lawrie hails from St Andrews, studied medicine in Aberdeen and, after a sojourn in Glasgow, has worked in Edinburgh for more than thirty years. He completed basic psychiatry training at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Following six months as a Wellcome Research Fellow, he was Lecturer and then Senior Clinical Research Fellow/Reader in the Department of Psychiatry in Edinburgh. As an honorary consultant psychiatrist with NHS Lothian, he works as a general adult psychiatrist in south-west Edinburgh. As an academic, his research is primarily focused on understanding and treating schizophrenia. Stephen is also enthusiastic about public engagement, training, clinical and evidence-based psychiatry.

Paul McCrone is a health economist at the University of Greenwich. He was previously at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London), where he worked for twenty-seven years after having previously worked at the University of Kent. He has worked on many economic studies in health and social care. He also teaches health economics to Master’s-level students, supervises PhD students and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals. He is involved in policy discussions around health funding and is part of the Mental Health Policy Research Unit funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Elaine, Baroness Murphy has been a crossbench life peer since May 2004, taking an interest in mental health and social care legislation in the House of Lords. From 1983 to 1997, she was Foundation Professor of Psychiatry of Old Age at Guy’s (now part of King’s College London). She was also, for a time, a district general manager in the London NHS and later chaired NHS trusts and health authorities in London. She was Vice Chairman of the Mental Health Act Commission from 1987 to 1994, Chief Medical Officer’s personal advisor in her field and a UK advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO). In retirement, she researches local history in East Anglia.

David Nutt is a psychiatrist and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Division of Brain Science, Imperial College London. He was previously President of the European Brain Council, British Association of Psychopharmacology, British Neuroscience Association and European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is currently Founding Chair of DrugScience.org.uk and holds visiting professorships at the Open University and the University of Maastricht. In 2013, he won the John Maddox Prize from Nature/Sense about Science for standing up for science and, in 2017, a Doctor of Laws honoris causa from the University of Bath.

David Pilgrim is Honorary Professor of Health and Social Policy at the University of Liverpool and Visiting Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Southampton. His recent publications include Understanding Mental Health: A Critical Realist Exploration (2015); Key Concepts in Mental Health (5th ed., 2019); Child Sexual Abuse: Moral Panic or State of Denial? (2018); and Critical Realism for Psychologists (2020).

Rob Poole is Professor of Social Psychiatry at Bangor University, where he co-directs the Centre for Mental Health and Society. He trained at St George’s Hospital, London, and in Oxford before working as an NHS community psychiatrist in Liverpool and in North Wales for twenty-one years. His clinical and research interests centre on the social determinants of mental health. He has written extensively, including scientific papers, book chapters and several books. In 2009, the Critical Psychiatry blog described him as ‘an old-fashioned radical’. He received the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

Gianetta Rands achieved six A levels and a degree in Experimental Psychology at Oxford University before embarking on medical training at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School. She trained as a general practitioner and as a psychiatrist. She worked in the NHS for thirty-four years and held many roles as consultant psychiatrist, tutor and training programme director and actively contributed to Royal College of Psychiatrists committees. She now has an independent practice specialising in complex assessments of dementias, brain injuries and mental capacity judgements. She is concerned about the effects on the brain of current in-flight cabin environments and the persistence of so many inequalities affecting women’s lives.

Miles Rinaldi is Head of Strategic Development at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. He pioneered the implementation of the Individual Placement and Support approach in the UK within community mental health services, first episode psychosis teams and primary care mental health services. He implemented a recovery-focused approach across his organisation, including establishing the first Recovery College in the UK. He also developed mental health policy at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Department of Health, Cabinet Office and Department for Work and Pensions. He is the author of more than thirty peer-reviewed publications.

Catherine Robinson is Professor of Social Care Research. She is Co-director of the Institute for Health Policy and Organisation and leads the Social Care and Society research group at the University of Manchester. Catherine is also an associate director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research. Her research interests include global mental health, adult social care and the prevention of suicide and self-harm.

Anne Rogers is Professor of Medical Sociology and Health Systems Implementation at the University of Southampton. Her current interests include research and knowledge translation in the sociological aspects of mental health and illness, users’ experiences of health care, health need and demand for care and how patients adapt to and incorporate new technologies into their everyday lives. Currently she is focused on addressing how personal and social networks and relationships in domestic and community settings act as a conduit for accessing resources and support for managing health and illness.

Wendy Rose OBE has a background in social work practice and social services management and was a senior civil servant in England advising on children’s policy. As a senior research fellow at the Open University and later an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University, she was an advisor to the Scottish Government on developing its children’s policy and subsequently to the Welsh Government on safeguarding reforms. She has worked extensively on national and international projects. Major themes of her work are improving child and family well-being, developing and implementing change and evaluating outcomes for children.

Graham Scambler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at University College London (UCL) and Visiting Professor of Sociology at Surrey University. He has written extensively on social theory, health, health inequality and stigma. His latest books are Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society: A Critical Realist Account (2018); A Sociology of Shame and Blame: Insiders Versus Outsiders (2020); and, with Aksel Tjora, Communal Forms: A Sociological Exploration of the Concept of Community (2020). He was a founding editor of the international journal Social Theory and Health and is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK.

Andrew Scull is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, San Diego. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford University, and Princeton University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the history of medicine at University College London (UCL). He is past president of the Society for the Social History of Medicine and the author of more than a dozen books on this history of psychiatry, including Decarceration (1977, 1984); Museums of Madness (1979); Social Order/Mental Disorder (1989); The Most Solitary of Afflictions (1993); Madhouse (2005); Hysteria (2010); Madness in Civilization (2015); and Psychiatry and Its Discontents (2019).

Edward Shorter is a Harvard-trained social historian who has held the Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine at the University of Toronto since 1991. In 1996, he was cross-appointed as Professor of Psychiatry in recognition of his contributions to the history of the discipline. He is the author of numerous books on aspects of psychiatric history, including A History of Psychiatry (1997); Before Prozac (2009); and What Psychiatry Left Out of the DSM-5 (2015). His latest book is The Madness of Fear: A History of Catatonia (2018), co-written with Dr Max Fink, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurology at SUNY-Stony Brook.

Thomas Stephenson is a trainee psychiatrist working in South London and Maudsley NHS Trust with a clinical and research interest in mental health among people in prison. Thomas is an active member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group (HoPSIG) executive committee.

George Szmukler is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Society at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. King’s College London. He was previously Consultant Psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust; Medical Director of the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust; Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London; Visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics; and Associate Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) – Mental Health Research Network. He is currently Chair of the Special Committee on Human Rights of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Pamela Taylor was trained in general adult and forensic psychiatry in the UK and United States. Roles include the Special Hospitals’ Service Authority’s Head of Medical Services (1990–5); Inner London Probation Service Executive Board member (1992–2002); special hospital personality disorder unit lead (1995–2004); Chair RCPsych Forensic Psychiatry Faculty (2017–20); editor-in-chief of Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health; and trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Crime in Mind. Taylor’s publications include more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and edited books: Forensic Psychiatry: Clinical, Legal and Ethical Issues (1993, 2014); Violence in Society (1993); Couples in Care and Custody (1999); and Personality Disorder and Serious Offending: Hospital Treatment Models (2006).

Jerry Tew is Professor of Mental Health and Social Work School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham. Following his graduation from Cambridge University, Jerry worked as a specialist mental health social worker before moving into an academic role where he has written and researched on social approaches in mental health, mental health policy, recovery and ‘whole family’ approaches. He is currently a co-investigator in an NIHR-funded trial of the Open Dialogue approach and is a senior fellow of the NIHR School for Social Care Research, for whom he is currently leading a research project on the implementation of asset-based and capacity-building approaches in social care and mental health.

Philip Timms trained in medicine and, subsequently, in psychiatry at Guy’s Hospital, London. In the late 1980s, he helped to set up and run the Psychiatric Team for Single Homeless People, the first mental health outreach team for homeless people in the UK. He subsequently led the START team for homeless people, which engaged patients on the streets and across other homeless milieu. He edited the RCPsych brochures for the public for twenty years. He is currently a consultant psychiatrist at the National Psychosis Unit. He has published on homelessness, information for patients and the use of jargon in mental health.

Trevor Turner attained his MBBS in 1976 at Barts Hospital in London, trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and obtained his MRCPsych in 1981 and his MD at London University in 1990. He was a general adult consultant based at Barts, Hackney and then Homerton Hospital between 1987 and 2013, working as a medical director and a clinical director. He chaired the North Thames and then one of the London Divisions of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and was Vice-President in 2004–6. He has written more than ninety papers and five books, including Community Mental Health Care: A Practical Guide to Outdoor Psychiatry. He remains an honorary consultant at the East London Foundation Trust.

Peter Tyrer is Emeritus Professor of Community Psychiatry in the Division of Psychiatry in Imperial College, having previously been a head of department and a professor at Imperial College since 1991. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2015; has chaired NICE guideline groups for borderline personality disorder (2009), substance misuse and psychosis (2012) and management of imminent aggression (2015); and has written 41 books and more than 650 original articles. He was the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry between 2003 and 2013, and between 2001 and 2006 headed a research group to evaluate components of the DSPD programme.