In this webinar, Dr. Barbara Mezes and Professor Jones will share their research into what personal recovery means to individuals with lived experience of bipolar disorder, what may support or hinder personal recovery and how these research findings can be translated and used in clinical practice to support people in their recovery journey. Personal recovery is regarded as more than just symptomatic improvements. People with lived experience of bipolar disorder emphasize the importance of improvements in other areas of their lives when they talk about their recovery, such better quality of life, wider engagement with the society, employment and control over life choices. In addition to discussing how people conceptualize personal recovery, the webinar will also describe some promising new approaches to facilitating personal recovery outcomes in bipolar disorder.
About Our Presenters:
Barbara Mezes completed her PhD at the Spectrum Centre for Mental Health Research, at Lancaster University, UK. Her PhD research and published work have focused on understanding the personal recovery concept and recovery experiences of people living with bipolar disorder. While conducting her PhD research, she worked as an academic researcher on clinical mental health research projects working directly with individuals with severe mental health problems and their relatives. Prior to her PhD, she worked in clinical and community mental health settings with children, adolescents and adults with caring responsibilities and/or mental health problems. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Resilience for Social at the University of Brighton, UK, where her research has extended to areas of co-production through community-university partnership and taking a social justice approach to promoting resilience and mental wellbeing and preventing mental health problems in young people living in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas.
Steven Jones is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Co-Director of the Spectrum Centre at Lancaster University. He has had clinical academic posts at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London and Manchester University before taking up his current role 12 years ago. He has over 30 years of experience working with bipolar disorder both as a researcher and clinician. Work to date has led to the development of a series new interventions to help people living with bipolar ranging from web-based self-management support to intensive face-to-face psychological therapy to enhance personal recovery. He co-authored the first evidence based CBT manual for bipolar disorder in 1999 for Wiley, subsequently updated in 2010. Jones led the team that produced the ‘Understanding bipolar” report for the British Psychological Society and was part of the Clinical Guideline Development team that updated the NICE bipolar treatment guidelines in 2014. He has over 190 publications to date and is currently leading on a Recovery focused therapy manual for bipolar commissioned by Wiley and an update of the ‘Understanding bipolar’ report for the British Psychological Society.