Professor Steve Gillard is Reader in Social and Community Mental Health in the Population Health Research Institute at St George’s University and is the Principal Investigator for DECISION. His current research focuses on the increasing role played by people with lived experience in producing the services that they use – the development of more distributed forms of mental health practice – including the introduction of new Peer Worker roles in mental health services.
Kati Turner is the Lead Public Patient Involvement Researcher for DECISION. She has worked at St George’s as a researcher using her lived experience of mental health issues since 2005. She has been involved in a number of qualitative research projects, including the experiences of detained patients; self-care; peer workers; recovery; co-production; ENRICH and DECISION studies. Kati also has a role supporting and developing public and patient involvement (PPI), co-production and using lived experience, either as a co-applicant or providing training and mentoring to other researchers. Kati co-facilitates the PEER (Peer Expertise in Education and Research) Group, which began in 2010, a group of local carers and people with lived experience who want to become actively involved in research and education taking place within St George’s and the local mental health Trust.
Dr Jared Smith is an experienced methodologist with an extensive publication record of statistical analyses of mental health and health service studies and works as a statistician on DECISION. His interest centres on research intended to provide evidence-based healthcare for clinical populations in the form of effective treatments and service delivery. Jared presently collaborates with a variety of clinical researchers within the South West London & St George’s (SWLSTG) Mental Health NHS Trust, providing scientific leadership and statistical and methodological input into a range of projects and research programmes.
Dr Lucy Goldsmith is the Post-Doctoral Researcher on DECISION and shares managing the project with Jared. She thinks the DECISION project is really important as the right help during a time of crisis can make a huge difference to service users. and she gained her PhD at the University of Manchester where she researched the therapeutic alliance (the relationship between clinicians and service users), finding that in therapy for psychosis, a good relationship can help service users recover, whereas a bad relationship can be detrimental. Please see Lucy’s publications and staff profile for further details.
Professor Heather Jarman has been a Consultant Nurse in Emergency Care at St George’s Hospital in London since 2004, specifically focusing in practice in the emergency and major trauma care and is part of the external investigator group for DECISION. She was the Clinical Director for the Major Trauma Centre at St George’s from 2012 – 2018, the only nurse to hold this level of appointment in the UK.
Jo is a service-user researcher with a specialist interest in trauma informed practice. She has worked as a researcher for several mental health charities and designed and facilitated prison based sexual violence and complex trauma groups for women. Her past research has explored the experiences of women in forensic mental health services who might meet the criteria for complex post traumatic stress disorder. Jo has also provided guidance to clinical commissioners around PPI and co-production. She is a big nature lover and is particularly fond of dogs.
Dr Katie Anderson is a Research Assistant/Service User Researcher on the DECISION project, a role she jobshares with Jo. She holds a B.A. in philosophy (2010) from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in psychology (2017) from London Southbank University. Her PhD explored couples’ experiences of MDMA using qualitative methods and has given rise to two publications. She has also worked as a Research Fellow in mental health and currently also works as a Lecturer. She is currently working on her bouldering skills and has recently adopted two kittens.
DECISION Study 