Ireland First Chair in Mental Health Nursing is in DCU
Wednesday 27 July 2005

Chris Stevenson (RMN, BA(Hons), MSc, PhD) was appointed to the first chair in mental health nursing in Ireland in June 2005 and will become Director of Research at the School of Nursing in DCU in August 2005. Prior to this, she was a reader in nursing at University of Teesside, and Deputy Director of the Teesside Centre for Rehabilitation Sciences (TCRS), having previously held a clinical lectureship at University of Newcastle for seven years where she worked closely with Professor Phil Barker. Chris trained as a psychiatric nurse before completing a BA (Hons) in psychology and sociology at University of Sunderland (polytechnic). She returned to practice, and for the majority of her clinical career was a community psychiatric nurse and facilitator of community mental health teams, specialising in working with families. During this time, Chris studied for a MSc in Health and Social Research at University of Northumbria. Her interest in family therapy was continued in her master's thesis and in her following PhD work.

Up until 2004, Chris was a member of a family team working with people in eating distress. Chris leads a research programme in `Psychological Recovery'. This embodies her commitment to developing approaches to working with people in psychological distress that place the person as the expert in relation to care. She contributed research evidence underpinning the Tidal Model of psychiatric and mental health nursing developed by Phil Barker in 2000. Her publications in this area include papers concerning implementing and evaluating care focusing on the interpersonal relationship dimension, and a book `Patient and Person: Empowering Interpersonal Relationships in Nursing' published in 2004. Chris has a long-standing interest in philosophy of science, traceable in publications from 1996 to the present. In particular, she has explored how post-modern/social constructionist ideas have currency for mental health research.

Professor Stevenson has an established research programme in psychological recovery within which 3 themes are embedded: Meaningful care for people in mental health distress; Developing and evaluating models of empowering practice, Methodological advances in recovery research. She also researches in the area of service user involvement. Recent projects include the production of a Good Practice Guide for working in partnership with people who have experience of mental health difficulties, and a service user led evaluation of an eating disorder service.

Professor Stevenson has an interest in critical review of research and practice, especially using Foucaultian analyses and postmodern critiques as research tools.

In addition, she has led evaluation research of educational programmes to prepare nurses and other professionals for extended practice roles, and undertaken research to describe the process and outcomes of interprofessional learning.