Advisory Group

Paddy Bazeley is one of the founders and Shift Leaders of Maytree, a non-medical sanctuary for people in suicidal crisis. The centre's approach is to provide a homely setting for safe exploration of thoughts and feelings with empathic listeners. Her understanding of suicidal people has developed during her 8 years at Maytree and prior to that, over 25 years working at the Samaritans.

Sophia Gill has campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of self-harm. In her younger years she often experienced suicidal feelings and attempted suicide. She has written about her experiences and has set up an Internet support group for people who self-harm.

Professor Keith Hawton is a Consultant Psychiatrist with Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare Trust, a Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford University, and the Director of the Oxford University Centre for Suicide Research. He has been working in the field of research into suicide and deliberate self-harm for more than 30 years. His work has resulted in over 400 publications. He has written and edited several books, including The International Handbook of Suicide and Attempted Suicide, Prevention and Treatment of Suicidal Behaviour: From Science to Practice, and By Their Own Young Hand: Deliberate Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideas in Adolescents.

Clare Milford Haven is an editor at Tatler magazine and an accomplished polo player. She lost her 21-year-old son James to suicide in 2006 and has since then been campaigning to raise awareness of depression, anxiety and suicide among young people. Together with James' father, Nicholas Wentworth-Stanley, they formed The James Wentworth Stanley Memorial Fund . In addition to Clare advising this research project as a bereaved parent, their trust has contributed to this research financially.

Dr Christabel Owens is the Head of Research for Devon Partnership NHS Trust and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Peninsula Medical School. She and her colleagues are currently completing a qualitative investigation into the support networks of people who have committed suicide aged 18-34.

Lauren Wright is a genuine mental health activist: she is both a SANEline volunteer and a member of SANE's Service User Group, not to mention her recent efforts in raising funds for SANE by running a 10K mini-marathon. As an advisor to this project she draws on her own, personal experience of mental health difficulties.

Professor Mark Williams is a Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford University and leads a research group at the Oxford University Centre for Suicide Research. He is currently investigating psychological mechanisms in suicidal behaviour, and his team is carrying out trials on a new treatment for suicidal depression: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). He is the author of Suicide and Attempted Suicide and The Mindful Way Through Depression

Professor Matthew Ratcliffe is a Professor and Head of Department in the Department of Philosophy at University of Durham. He is a principal investigator on two current AHRC-funded projects: 'Emotions and Feelings in Psychiatric Illness' and 'Emotional Experience in Depression: A Philosophical Study . He has published extensively in phenomenology, philosophy of psychology and philosophy of psychiatry. You can access his website here