Divine Charura is Professor of Counselling Psychology at York St John University in York, and a member of the British Psychological Society. Colin Lago is an independent counsellor/psychotherapist/consultant and a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and...
therapy
I come from a background in neuroscience and mathematical modelling. I started my academic life at Cambridge University, studying natural sciences and majoring in neuroscience. I quickly became fascinated with how the brain works. After my undergraduate degree, I started to...
As a community we know that in addition to reducing the accessibility of face-to-face services, the Covid-19 pandemic has negative implications for mental wellbeing across the country. During the first lockdown, one survey found that 24 per cent of UK adults and 44 per cent...
Psychologists and psychiatrists came together on 15 December to share evidence with the House of Lords Covid-19 Select Committee on the long-term impacts of our use of technology during the pandemic on our mental wellbeing. The peers also touched on the use of technology in...
It was a day I won’t forget in a hurry.
I was an inpatient on an acute psychiatric ward, sectioned under the Mental Health Act. I was meant to be in a place of safety. But perched on the end of my unmade bed, with tears rolling down my face, I felt so alone. I wanted to...
In the October issue, Jonathon Dawson asked how to address racism in therapy. Dawson mentioned that a key aim of therapy settings is to build therapeutic alliance, yet his...
Road to hell
Things did not start well. At primary school I was described as a ‘slow coach’ and bedevilled by mistakes in my written work (only labelled as dyslexia many years later). However, I did well in the 11+ exam and got into the local grammar...
For my third-year placement as a trainee clinical psychologist, I wanted to do something different. I’d begun to find working in a clinic setting a bit repetitive, and the potential impact of this work felt limited. I had also begun to feel that while individual therapy might...
Having seen you talk about your work, I’m intrigued by the way you do psychology. Has it changed over the years?
The way I ‘do’ psychology, and what I think I mean by that, has changed considerably over the years
Before my training, and during it,...
Gloria Szymanski was a 31-year old, divorced and single mother when she allowed herself to be filmed in therapy with Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls and Albert Ellis in 1964. She had been recruited by her own therapist, Everett Shostrum, and told that the videos would be seen by...