Robert Dudley, Professor of Mental Health, Department of Psychology
Robert is also a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust where he works in the EIP service and has a Trust-wide role for the provision of psychological therapies for psychosis.
email: rob.dudley@york.ac.uk
Our 60-second interview with Robert:
What do you do in the field of mental health?
I work to better understand and treat unusual experiences like hearing or seeing things others do not, or distressing beliefs like when a person feels paranoid and suspicious and mistrustful of others. These are common when people develop psychosis and I work as a researcher and a clinician in this setting. I am involved in a number of treatment studies that aim to improve the help we offer to people, by making the treatments more effective or more accessible, often by using a more widely available workforce or by using digital treatments.
What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?
I work with a brilliant team of people with lived experience, NHS and University based colleagues. I am a clinician delivering therapy in the NHS and am able to bring this understanding and experience to my research which feels like the dream job. I am lucky to have an exciting mix of research and clinical work.
What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?
Improving our understanding and treatment can be slow as acquiring funding, running a trial, and then disseminating the findings means many years can pass before treatment changes.
What impact do you hope your work is having- or can potentially have?
Access to treatment for people with psychosis is extremely limited and so my focus is on increasing access to effective treatments for people with distressing experiences or unusual beliefs. Increasingly this means providing shorter, targeted, more powerful treatments or ones that utilise the immersive and engaging benefits brought by digital technology.
Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?
Look after yourself like you would want to take care of a friend or loved one. Stick to good routines and try to eat well, sleep well, take exercise, and find something rewarding to do, be it seeing friends, joining a club or pursuing a hobby. It all helps.