The Latest Bulletin

Esenam lives in Ghana, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Fearing COVID-19 infection, she waited almost a year before going to the clinic for therapy. Unemployed at the time, Esenam did not have enough funds for treatment. Her parents, thanks to their pension, ensured she could get her medications, but many others cannot. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented stressor to the mental health of many individuals. According to WHO, in 2020, COVID-19 had disrupted or, in some cases, halted critical mental health services in 93% of countries worldwide, while the demand for mental health support increased. Click here to read more

When Sunita Nandihalli was a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they and an undergraduate intern found themselves in an lift with a man who seemed fascinated with the intern. She was multiracial, and he repeatedly quizzed her about her hair. Nandihalli, a queer person of colour, had experienced similar obnoxious comments and stepped between the two of them, asking the stranger about his day and where he was going. “I had to take the intern’s safety into account,” they recall. Nandihalli knew what to do because of ADVANCEGeo, a project that trains researchers in how to intervene when they see bias and harassment in the geosciences. Nandihalli had lent their expertise to the project to adapt ‘bystander-intervention…

What is it like to live with psychosis, or Parkinson’s, or dementia, or to be autistic? The traditional approach is for an interested team of psychologists to design a study, and run it. But this is changing. People with disorders are no longer simply subjects to be studied but ‘experts by experience’, who can play key roles in the research process itself. ‘It’s about working with rather than on or for people,’ says Georgia Pavlopoulou, of UCL and the Anna Freud Centre. New academic/patient co-productions are now delivering all kinds of benefits, from unprecedented insights into complex disorders to improvements in vital services. Click here to read more

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The ideal practice guide for every social worker and social work student. Based on Neil Thompson’s extensive experience of bringing theory to life in a practice context, this invaluable manual is an essential guide for all practitioners, from student on placement through newly qualified worker to old hand. Available from here or Amazon

Sadly, it is often the case these days that we feel the need to make a complaint. What is even sadder is that so many organizations seem ill-equipped to respond positively to people’s concerns – and that can lead to considerable ill feeling and an intensification of pressures. What can make such situations even worse is when the complaint is made to someone who cannot do anything about it (and who is perhaps not inclined to pass the concerns on to someone who can). So, whenever you need to make a complaint, make sure that you complain to the person or body that has the power to do something to address the problem. Working out who that is may not…

We are living through turbulent times. Emerging from a global pandemic in which ethnic minority communities have disproportionately suffered, over half of ethnic minority children in Britain are currently living in poverty. We are also facing a legislative agenda which poses the most significant and sustained threat to ethnic minority people’s civil rights in recent memory. Ongoing international conflicts mean there is a battle for hearts and minds over the extent to which we support those simply seeking safety. It is not just refugees and migrants that are on the front line, British Muslims continue to be demonised, Jewish communities report an all-time high for antisemitic hate crimes and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities remain ostracised and excluded from almost every section of…

Sooner or later, they’re all finite. And the way we allocate our time and emotional energy determines what gets done. If we audited your day in six-minute increments, what would we find? By the clock, how did you actually spend the time given to you (we each get the same 24 hours). How much was spent on work? And the work time, how is it correlated with what creates the value you seek? A question that’s harder to measure, but with far more impact, of the time you allocated, what was your focus and emotional drive spent on? What were the crises and highlights of the last day or week? Click here to read more

Considering that one in five people in the UK report having a disability, employees need to be aware of their legal protections and employers need to ensure they fulfil their duties. Moreover, statistics show that only half (53 per cent) of people with disabilities are employed, compared to 82 per cent of non-disabled people, and addressing disability discrimination in the workplace is a great first step towards tackling the employment gap and the inequality that stems from it. The Equality Act 2010 not only protects those with disabilities from being discriminated against in the workplace, but also provides a more expansive definition of disabilities than people generally realise. This includes hidden disabilities such as mental health conditions or learning difficulties,…

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