“When you’re a young person, your identity is so malleable… It’s very easy for a label to
become enmeshed with your sense of identity”. Agency and mental health are
intrinsically related. Most mental health problems appear before the age of 25, at a time
when people are still developing their sense of agency. The sense of agency is that
feeling that you can shape your own life through actions and decisions. When young
people seek help from mental health professionals, they put their trust in these
professionals. Practitioners need to be mindful of how their words may support or
obstruct a young person’s sense of agency.
In this Lecture, Rose McCabe, Lisa Bortolotti and Michele Lim, will analyse a series of
recorded encounters between young people and mental healthcare practitioners in
emergency services. They will analyse in which ways the communication validates the
young person’s experience, whether it legitimized their choice to seek help, if it refrained
from objectifying the young person, if it affirmed their capacity to contribute to positive
change and if it involved them in the decision-making process.
This is the eighth lecture in the London Lecture Series 2023/24, which this year is on
the subject of Madness and Mental Health. Watch the whole series here: • Madness and Mental Hea...
About the speakers
Rose McCabe is Professor of Clinical Communication at City, University of London and
co-Director of the Centre for Mental Health Research at City
(www.city.ac.uk... mccabe). Her research focuses
on understanding patient experience, professional-patient communication, the
therapeutic relationship and developing interventions to improve communication,
therapeutic relationships and outcomes of mental healthcare. Central to this work is
involving people with lived experience in designing and evaluating new approaches
to care. Key concepts of interest include agency, coercion, epistemic injustice, trust and
engagement. She works across a range of issues (psychosis, self-harm, depression,
dementia) and treatment settings (inpatient and community mental health care,
emergency departments, primary care). She also works with community organisations
and schools to improve mental health and wellbeing.
Lisa Bortolotti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham specialising in
the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, with a focus on belief, rationality, mental
health, and agency. She is the editor in chief of the journal Philosophical Psychology
and her most recent book is Why Delusions Matter (Bloomsbury 2023), accessible
to a wide audience. Lisa is involved in several collaborative projects exploring youth
mental health and is creating and gathering teaching resources on misinformation and
conspiracy theories at The Philosophy Garden (www.thephilosop...).
Michele Lim is a trainee clinical psychologist currently undertaking a Doctorate in
Clinical Psychology. Prior to this, she completed an MSc in Psychological Research
(University of Oxford) and a BSc in Psychology with Education (UCL). In her clinical
work, Michele has worked with children, young people and adults with various emotional
and psychological difficulties including trauma, anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
As a researcher, she has spoken and presented at international conferences, and holds
publications in journals including Neuron and Nature Human Behaviour. Alongside her
clinical and academic work, she is passionate about widening public engagement with
the field of psychology. She has collaborated with various organisations via co-
production on multiple research projects - ranging from improving young people’s
sense of agency in mental healthcare to feasibility trials for psychological interventions.
Lecture - 00:00
Q&A - 49:18
17 авг 2024
