Isla Parker Editor

Isla Parker is a pen name. Isla is a freelance editor and writer who promotes the understanding of health issues and well-being. She undertook a degree in English, and found it interesting to study how literature explores illness. This led to Isla writing a novel about anorexia for teenagers called 'Size Zero?', that is loosely based on her own experience. Isla has co-edited The Practical Handbook of Hearing Voices for PCCS Books and The Practical Handbook of Eating Difficulties (Pavilion Publishing). In her free time Isla enjoys playing the piano. She also takes part in an online writing group that has introduced her to writers from different countries. - Richard Coaten is a dancer and registered dance movement psychotherapist (RDMP) with the Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy, where he was a Director on the Governing Council 2013-2016. He has spent the past 16 years working clinically as a DMP in an NHS older people's psychiatric ward in West Yorkshire and in day centres. He is a national and international specialist in non-verbal, movement and dance-based practices with people living with dementia. He completed a doctoral thesis on dance movement psychotherapy and dementia from Roehampton University, and delivers workshops and conference presentations in Canada, the US and Europe, supporting the training of the next generation of DMPs. He has much published work to his credit and is on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed international journal Dementia. He also sits on the Board of the Creative Dementia Arts Network. - Mark Hopfenbeck is social anthropologist specialising in health and social policy, an assistant professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), visiting fellow at London South Bank University (LSBU) and individual partner at the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine's College, Oxford University. At NTNU he teaches mindfulness and is a member of the Wellbeing and Social Sustainability research group. For the past 20 years, he has been teaching and supporting the implementation of the Open Dialogue approach in mental health care. Mark is co-editor of The Practical Handbook of Hearing Voices and The Practical Handbook of Eating Difficulties. He is currently co-investigator on a large-scale programme of research into crisis and continuing mental health care within the NHS (the ODDESSI study).