This week’s activities (29th March - 1st April, 2016)

I was in the city of Aberdeen (which was new for me) on Saturday, at the British Psychological Society Scottish undergraduate conference. A long day (especially on a Saturday) but the East Coast train line back to Manchester is spectacular.

This morning saw me and a few colleagues featured on the Radio 4 Today programme, talking about the research funding shortfall in mental health generally, and for psychosocial perspectives in particular. You can hear the interview here and our piece starts at 2:18:32.

This coming week, on Tuesday 29^th, I’m attending a meeting to discuss outcomes measurement in mental health services - to support the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health , to ensure that mental health services address the issues that really matter to people and (in part) to consider some of the implications of linking outcomes to ‘payment’ and commissioning processes. I'll then meet with colleagues from UKCP (the UK Council for Psychotherapy) and then I hope to drop in (only for ten minutes, I fear) to a meeting of the Psychologists Against Austerity (PAA).

On Wednesday 30^th March, I’ll be concentrating on University business (at the University of Liverpool).

On Thursday 31^st, I’ll be discussing psychological health and wellbeing at work with colleagues from the BBC (not, on this occasion, discussing broadcast issues; instead looking at the health and psychological wellbeing of employees).

At present, Friday 1^st April is free (although that might be someone’s idea of a cruel April Fool’s day joke), so I’ll try to get some writing done…

And… I’ll probably check my free online course

Now on its fourth run (32,000 active learners thus far), my free online course (MOOC), which returns on 13th June. Although we’ll need to put in some considerable work before this kind of education is routine, it’s a really exciting model – I’ve had over 60,000 people registering an interest, and 32,000 active learners. More, probably, than I’d see face-to-face over my entire career.