I am new to using social media professionally. As psychologists, we are encouraged to be wary of sharing on social media; there are so many potential pitfalls for ourselves and our clients if we are not extremely thoughtful and considerate in our use of public platforms. But after being a long-time viewer of other mental health professionals on social media and seeing a few inspiring psychologists absolutely killing it on social media (examples here, here and here...and there are many more!) I can see how powerful a tool it can be to connect with people and to share information on topics close to my heart.

When I work with clients, my aim is always to help them to reconnect with the things that are really important to them, removing the psychological obstacles that stand in their way. So in the spirit of this, for my first post, I wanted to share a bit about me and the stuff that really matters to me to explain how I ended up here, doing this work, with the people I hope to help.
Where I came from
I am a clinical psychologist (what's that? Learn here!).
I'm from the UK; I grew up in Manchester (yet remained impressively immune to football fever!) and later moved to London. I completed my clinical training in London and worked as a psychologist in the NHS before relocating to Hong Kong in 2017. I moved back to the UK in 2023 and started working with clients in the UK in 2024.
Our clinical training requires us to develop core skills in certain areas, before specialising in areas that are of particular interest to us. During my training, I worked with adults in a busy inner city GP practice, with older people in the community, in a child and adolescent mental health team, in inpatient and outpatient settings for people with neurological conditions and in a secure forensic hospital. After my training, I went on to work in a community rehabilitation team in London, supporting people with neurological conditions and other physical difficulties. These varied experiences helped me to understand the unique skills required to work with different people in different settings and helped me to start to narrow down the areas of work that felt like the best fit for me. I realised that the stuff I really love doing is:
Supporting people who have experienced brain injuries, strokes and other neurological conditions with the psychological aspects of recovery and rehabilitation;
Helping adults who are struggling with their mental health to overcome their difficulties using psychological therapy;
Applying my professional knowledge more indirectly via education and training, skilling people up to recognise mental health problems and talk about them when they need to.
A move to Hong Kong

In 2017, my husband's work took us to Hong Kong, where we lived for almost 6 years. My work in Hong Kong involved two main roles:
One to one therapy with adults experiencing anxiety, depression, medically unexplained symptoms, low self-esteem, OCD and other issues;
Working as a clinical advisor for a rapidly growing mental health charity My work involved developing and delivering training sessions to increase awareness about mental health and contributing to projects and campaigns targeting gaps in mental health knowledge and service provision.
Next steps
In 2023, I moved back to the UK to be closer to family. I went on maternity leave very soon after my return, and started to plan my work in the UK towards the end of 2023 and early 2024. This period of time gave me a chance to step back and reflect on my work in the field so far, which has been varied, fascinating and at times, intense and frustrating. While I have seen huge developments in the field in the last 15 years, with more people talking about mental health than ever, there remains significant obstacles to people getting the help they need when it comes to things like anxiety, depression and lots of other challenges and life experiences.
When I boil it down to the main things I have learned in my work so far, the stuff that really stands out to me is this:
Despite increased awareness, lots more conversation about mental health and campaigns to reduce stigma, most people still do not receive the support they need for their mental health at all, or they get input only when problems have become more severe (more on this here);
Mental health services are woefully underfunded; people who do not have the means to access support in the private sector are often left on long waitlists without any support. The level of knowledge about mental health in the general public is fairly low. This means that people may not recognise mental health problems when they are experiencing them, which prevents them from getting help at an early stage when problems are easier to address;
We continue to see the mind and body as completely separate, ignoring the clear two-way relationship that exists between our physical and mental health that is relevant to the management of lots of different physical and mental health problems.
When I work with people individually, we often try to drill down into the stuff that matters most to them. We do this because in order to remain motivated to work towards our goals, there has to be something important at stake. When I think about my professional identity, values and what I want my work to be about, I cannot think of anything more important to me than the issues I highlight above. These issues are incredibly close to my heart, and I try to use them as guiding principles in my practice.
Here's how:
I want to encourage as many people as possible to recognise when they need help for their mental health, and to help them to access it early so that they can get back to living their life the way they want to live it. I do my best to reach people who are experiencing mental health problems, trying to use what I have learned in my work to understand the things that stop people from getting help and try to speak to those issues via my website, social media and my direct work with clients and members of the public.
I recognise that not everyone can access one to one mental health support. Where this is the case, I am passionate about connecting people to useful mental health information and interventions to people via other means. This includes sharing information online and developing and delivering training sessions for people who are not mental health professionals to increase the level of knowledge, understanding and skill in the general public. This increases the likelihood of people getting to the help they need when they need it.
I want to get people thinking about the relationship between the mind and the body, helping them to recognise the interdependence of the two. This is highly relevant in my work with people with neurological conditions, but also for people experiencing other difficulties like anxiety and depression which have a considerable physical component that is often not accounted for in treatments. This point is also particularly important when people are experiencing medically unexplained symptoms; this is something I really love to work with. More on that here.
I hope this gives you some idea of what I'm about. Are you a mental health professional who is interested in these topics? Or are you someone going through a period of poor mental health who is looking for support (these aren't mutually exclusive!). Either way, I'd love to hear from you!
Comments