CEO INTERVIEW
basis for Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust’s first recovery strategy, while for North London Forensic Consulting, I developed a Patient Council that has spread across seven different London mental health Trusts. The goal of the latter was to help service-users build their skills and confidence to make change, and also to try to embed that change within the seven Trusts’ commissioning processes. It’s a patient collaborative for a forensic consortium, which is a new NHS initiative.”
Helping people tell their stories Hannah Chamberlain said: “When I established, and subsequently ran, Mental Snapp, in 2015, I had a lot of discourse with service-users, as indeed I did with Barrage Media, helping people tell their stories, telling my own story, and encouraging people to build their confidence and then – via my NHS work, doing work to embed these principles in practice. I have also undertaken quite a lot of work on start-up principles and social innovation. I’m thus a bit of a jack of all trades.” I asked her to tell me a bit more about Mental Snapp. She explained: “We created an app which we promoted via social media direct to service-users for them to download and use to describe their day, and how they were feeling, via two- minute video diaries. They could then tag and rate their ‘movies’ and their feelings, recording the videos, and re-viewing them, as often as they liked. The aim was to help them take control of their own narrative. We won two awards for the app, and it featured both in the Evening Standard and on the BBC, which gave us quite a platform; it was very ‘media-friendly’, so there were plenty of opportunities to publicise it. Journalling can be a great way to aid recovery – in the same way that a written diary helps you to get to know yourself. Certainly when I recorded a video, I found I got to know myself in a different way, and I’ve heard many service-users say they are not their own best friends, or sometimes don’t like themselves very much. The app’s aim was to provide some self-care and confidence, and a renewed sense of purpose. During this period I also met Professor Paula Reavey, who did some studies on Mental Snapp.”
Aspirations as CEO I next asked Hannah about some of her hopes and aspirations as the DiMHN’s CEO. She said: “I think it’s fantastic that we’ve got the annual conference and exhibition, which are a great opportunity to network and share experience, and a fruitful place for meeting people. However, I’d like to ensure that the Design in Mental Health Network works for people all year round, and continues to promote and push best practice and involve the voice of people with lived experience, and, of course, staff. If we can make spaces which feel like they offer the prospect of recovery and a shift in identity, then we
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A warm welcome from DiMHN’s Chair
DiMHN Chair, Philip Ross, said of Hannah Chamberlain’s appointment: “Congratulations and a warm welcome to Hannah Chamberlain, our inaugural CEO. Her appointment is an absolutely key one for us. She has worked with DiMHN previously, speaking at our conference, and playing a role on the Board in the earlier years based on her own lived experience of mental healthcare environments. This is the first time we’ll have a full time employee at DiMHN – someone with the focus and capacity to drive our ideas forward. Hannah will be working closely with our Board of Directors and Associates, and with our existing Workstreams, as well as implementing her own exciting ideas.”
He continued: “In all we had 37 applicants for the role, and what really made Hannah stand out was her lived experience, and her great understanding of mental healthcare settings. Having her on board will enable us to think harder about, and work more effectively towards, supporting NHS Trusts, architects, manufacturers, and stakeholders, to improve the mental healthcare environment. As somebody with lived experience, she really understands the reality of facing poor mental health. Equally, her breadth of professional experience in areas including film-making, documentary production, training, leading change and user focus programmes, writing, and being a Service- User Governor of an NHS Trust, coupled with her acumen in dealing with a wide a range of audiences, organisations, and stakeholders, should prove invaluable in her new role as our CEO.”
Having Hannah on board will enable us to think harder about, and work more effectively towards, supporting NHS Trusts, architects, manufacturers, and stakeholders, to improve the mental healthcare environment
can make ones which give people futures, rather than defining their past.”
Has design improved? I asked if she thought mental healthcare facility design – and especially inpatient unit design – had improved over the last 5-10 years? She said: “I’d love to say ‘yes’, but I think it has a long way to go. The power dynamics are so important, and the challenge set to architects by someone in psychosis is far higher, and tougher, than they realise – because if you’re in psychosis, you pick up on every sub-conscious intent behind the building’s design. When you’re mentally unwell you can’t help but be incredibly permeable to the dynamics of what the environment is telling you about yourself – because you’re in a strange environment and this is your experience, so all the cues are going in at a really deep, sub-conscious level. If architects think, for example, that nobody will notice that they’ve designed the same visuals to run from the nursing station straight through to the patient room at the end of the corridor, they’re mistaken – service-users will pick up on every such cue, so the bar is incredibly high.
An ‘immense challenge’ remains “So, perhaps,” she said, “mental healthcare environments have improved, but there’s still considerable room for improvement. The challenge to create better environments is immense, and I don’t think we should ever rest on our laurels. For the DiMHN, I think year-round engagement is key. People have genuine problems and questions on mental health and architecture, and product design,
throughout the year, and we need to be there to help answer them, as a community that can signpost people to the answers. I don’t simply want us to present our shiny side; that’s not where real learning comes from. I want to encourage people to be open and honest about any questions they have.”
Importance of collaboration She added: “We also need to encourage Estates and Facilities and clinical personnel to work more closely together, as well as with service-users – but in a way that acknowledges the limitations of what NHS mental healthcare providers can do – budgetary and other constraint-wise. There is no doubt in my mind that we can use architecture and product design to cue excellence in clinical teams too. We should be thinking about that, and how we can design in clinical excellence, which is where involving clinical personnel in a process can really make a difference. Both sides can refresh each other’s thinking, but you need to get service-users involved as well, or it’s not a fully rounded conversation. “I think there can also be an assumption
that you simply set and forget architecture, but it’s vital not to do that – and to refresh spaces – because they change over time. Creative art and projections, for example, can make a big difference in many mental healthcare settings. Overall, I’m really excited to be taking up the role of CEO at the Design in Mental Health Network – an organisation that I have always admired as an interesting coalition of ideas and people – and to meeting people, and getting stuck in. I want to have an open door in terms of people approaching me with ideas.” n
FEBRUARY 2023 | THE NETWORK
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