In a podcast for Ethics Untangled and a leaflet with McPin, Lisa Bortolotti shares how professionals can support young people facing mental health difficulties.
This week at Ethics Untangled, the podcast of IDEA: The Ethics Centre, a conversation between Jim Baxter and Lisa Bortolotti was released, where she talks about good clinical communication in youth mental health encounters. In the podcast, Bortolotti discusses recent work highlighting the need for practitioners to protect young people's agency in clinical interactions.
The research has also given rise to a leaflet (available in PDF) aimed at professionals supporting young people with their mental health. This has been coproduced with McPin. With input from the Young People Advisory Group, Bortolotti collected some tips and quotes about what to say and not to say to make young people feel listened to, empower them, and help them form meaningful connections.
Together with Matthew Broome and an interdisciplinary team featuring researchers with lived experience, in the last few years Bortolotti explored the importance of agency in youth mental health as part of two UKRI-funded projects. The first project, led by Rose McCabe (City St George's, University of London), aimed at identifying the features of successful interactions between young people and professionals at mental health emergency services. The second project, led by Michael Larkin (Aston University), aimed at refining the collaborative methodology used in the first project, called Dialogical Co-analysis.
Bortolotti is continuing this line of research via EPIC, Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare, a project funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award and led by Havi Carel (University of Bristol). Earlier this year, a book on how to achieve epistemic justice in mental health was published open access; and a paper on how epistemically just interactions contribute to good clinical practice appeared open access in Philosophy of Medicine.
Professor of Philosophy
Biographical and contact information for Professor Lisa Bortolotti, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham.
