Completed PhD students:

1. Peter Taylor  - principal supervisor. Understanding suicide in people experiencing psychosis.
2. Judith Johnson - principal supervisor. Understanding resilience to suicide in people experiencing psychosis.
3. Maria Panagioti - second supervisor. Understanding suicide in people experiencing PTSD.
4. Robert Dempsey  - principal supervisor. Autobiographical memory specificity and cognitive style across the bipolar spectrum.
5. Victoria Absalom Hornby - second supervisor. Family Intervention in forensic services.

Current PhD students:

1. Kate Sheehy (principal supervisor) : understanding suicidality in prisoners - recently submitted.
2. Cintia Faija (principal supervisor): emotional regulation mechanisms in anorexia nervosa with a focus on pride.
3. Rebecca Owen (principal supervisor): Bipolar Disorder and suicidality.
4. Donna Littlewood (principal supervisor): Interactions between unipolar depression, sleep and suicidality.

Prospective PhD students:

We have a number of PhD projects open which are:

1. Understanding suicide schema in those experiencing psychosis (with Chris Armitage and Dan Pratt)

2. The role of compulsions in suicidality in those experiencing bipolar disorder (with Steve Jones, Spectrum Centre, Lancaster, and Rhiannon Corcoran, Liverpool University).

3. The role of resilience to suicide in those experiencing psychosis (with Sarah Peters and Gillian Haddock).

4. The role of resilience to suicide in those with physical mulyimorbidiy (with Chris Armitage, Maria Paangioti, and Sarah Peters).

We have formed a research group to investigate mechanisms underlying suicidal thoughts and behaviours. This research group currently comprises academic staff, clinical psychologists, a service user research fellow, a post-doctoral researcher, PhD students and Masters students. We are interested in developing socio-cognitive models of suicidality, and resilience to suicide, that apply transdiagnostically but which also aim to explain diagnosis specific suicidality in unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis and PTSD. A focus of this work is the investigation of the role of self-appraisal mechanisms together with information processing biases and ‘suicide’ schema in those who are, or have been, suicidal. It is important, not only to explain the psychological models underlying suicide, but also to explain resilience to suicide. Hence, a growing strand of our research is to identify the processes which confer resilience to suicide in people with a number of psychological conditions (psychosis, PTSD, bipolar disorder and depression), with two or more chronic physical conditions, and also across the lifespan (in young adults, the middle aged and the elderly). We all feel passionately that the work that we do should have clear contributions to practical therapeutic application.

A second aspect of my research is attempting to bridge the role of cognitive processes and therapeutic techniques in producing positive behaviour change in clinical samples. Together with Professor Christine Barrowclough, we are investigating the role of i. reflective informal reasoning and ii. emotional statements relating to current or past situations in motivating clients with a dual diagnosis of substance abuse and psychosis to change problematic behaviours.

• Professor Chris Armitage (University of Manchester)
• Professor Nick Tarrier (Emeritus)
• Professor Christine Barrowclough (Emeritus)
• Professor Alison Wearden (University of Manchester)
• Professor Steve Jones (University of Lancaster)
• Professor Rhiannon Corcoran (University of Liverpool)
• Dr. Simon Kyle (University of Oxford)
• Dr. Richard Emsley (University of Manchester)
• Dr. Fiona Lobban (University of Lancaster)
• Dr. Fiona Ulph (University of Manchester)
• Dr. Peter Taylor (University of Liverpool)
• Dr. Dan Pratt (University of Manchester)
• Dr. Katherine Berry (University of Manchester)