John Wattis Author & Editor

John Wattis is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, University of Huddersfield. John was full time Medical Director for Leeds Community and Mental Health NHS Trust from 1995-99. He also held senior offices within the Faculty for Old Age Psychiatry of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has been R&D director for several NHS trusts. Before his retirement from his consultant post in the NHS, he trained as a business and life coach. Since then he has continued in his visiting university post, lecturing various student groups and supporting research. He has taught basic and advanced coaching skills to psychiatrists through the Royal College of Psychiatrists Education and Training Centre, and coached several NHS, university and voluntary sector staff, mostly in senior management positions. He has also acted for several years as part-time medical director (mental health) to two primary care trusts and continues to give medical management support on an ad hoc basis to these trusts.

Stephen Curran is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, University of Huddersfield (UK) and Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Wakefield. Stephen trained in Leeds and worked as Lecturer in Old Age Psychiatry at the University of Leeds until he took up his current post as Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry in Wakefield in 1998. His primary clinical role is focused on the acute in-patient service for older people and he is also Lead Clinician for the Wakefield Memory Service. Since his appointment, Stephen has had several medical management roles including Programme Director, Head of Service and Clinical Lead. Since October 2017 he has been the Associate Medical Director for Postgraduate Medical Education. Stephen has contributed to significant changes in the organisation including service development and changes to the medical management arrangements. He also has considerable practical experience of dealing with the many management issues that arise in a busy old age psychiatry service including job planning, appraisal, quality improvements, change management and dealing with complaints, conflicts and the pressures caused by limited resources.

Elizabeth Cotton is a writer and educator working in the field of mental health at work. Her background is in workers’ education and international development. She has worked in over 35 countries on diverse issues such as HIV/AIDS, organising and building grassroots networks, negotiating and bargaining with employers as head of education for Industriall, one of the largest trade unions in the world, reflected in her book Global Unions Global Business (Libri Publishers). She teaches and writes academically at Middlesex University about employment relations and precarious work. She is Editor-in-Chief of an ABS4 journal, Work, Employment & Society, looking at the sociology of work. She blogs as www.survivingwork.org to a network of 30,000 people. In 2017, she published the largest national survey about working conditions in mental health, www.thefutureoftherapy.org. She set up www.survivingworkinhealth.org as a free resource in partnership with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Her current book, Surviving Work in Healthcare: Helpful stuff for people on the frontline (Gower, 2017), was nominated for the Chartered Management Institute’s practitioner book of the year.