78. Martin Seager. Creating compassionate psychological services

Martin has great depth of experience in Health and allied fields. In this conversation he explains how strongly he believes in making psychological ideas and treatments widely available and how this has sometimes encountered opposition from those with power.

 

Martin Seager is a consultant clinical psychologist and adult psychotherapist most recently with the addictions charity, CGL (2016-2020). He is a clinician, lecturer, campaigner and author on mental health issues. He studied at Oxford University, Edinburgh University and the Tavistock Clinic. He worked in the NHS for over 30 years and was head of psychological services in two large mental health Trusts. He had a regular mental health slot on BBC Essex radio from 2003-2007 and BBC Radio Five Live “Up All Night” from 2007-2009. In 2006 he formed a national mental health advisory group for the health secretary at the time, Patricia Hewitt. In 2010-2011 he worked in the homelessness field with the charity St Mungo’s and also the “Big Issue”. He spent over 10 years as a branch consultant to the Central London Samaritans and was a member of the mental health advisory board for the College of Medicine. He is now on the clinical advisory board of the Campaign for Living Miserably (CALM). His passion is to promote a psychologically-minded approach to science, public health and human well-being, moving away from treating mental conditions to meeting the psychological needs of the human condition. He is a specialist on male gender psychology and co-founder of both the Male Psychology Network and the Male Psychology Section of the BPS. He is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health (2019) which includes a chapter on Gamma Bias theory which he developed with John Barry.

 

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/april-2020/gamma-bias-new-theory