about
Moving between places and cultures
Moving between places and cultures has shaped my longstanding curiosity about people, culture, spirituality, psychology and philosophy.
why inbetweenmind
Many of the people who come to me are third culture. They have grown up or lived between different countries and cultures, and never feel they quite fit in, in one place or the other. inbetweenmind is named for that in-between state, and for the space between what’s said and unsaid.
I warmly welcome people from all cultures, communities, and subcultures.
I have been curious about people, minds and emotions for as long as I can remember. When I was about 20, a mindfulness retreat in France changed my life. It showed me how much there is to be grateful for, and I wanted to help other people find meaning in their own lives. For a while I even thought about staying on at the monastery as a nun.
I chose psychology instead, and have lived and worked in Hong Kong, the UK, Tanzania and Australia. In Tanzania there were almost no mental health services. Going into schools to give mental health training showed me how much it helps to learn coping tools early, before things get hard.
Art, music and photography have always been part of my life, so I trained in expressive arts therapy to see how they could meet psychology. It changed how I think about therapy: less like a clinic, more like a playroom, where we can find meaning by doing as well as talking.
Outside work
Music is my language, and my recent discoveries have taken me through ambient music, nu-jazz and techno.
I also love hiking, travelling and taking photographs.
clinical experience
A decade in mental health across the UK, Hong Kong and Africa
In the NHS
- STRIDES, an early-intervention eating disorders service
- a young people's eating disorders team
- community mental health
- inpatient wards
- early intervention in psychosis
- learning disability services
- substance misuse services
Expressive arts, Hong Kong
- schools
- care homes
- community centres
- people with physical disabilities
- stroke rehabilitation, including a stroke choir
- people who find feelings hard to name (alexithymia)
- every age, from babies to older adults
Research and teaching
- a citywide mental health curriculum for Hong Kong secondary schools: writing it, training teachers to deliver it, and evaluating it
- a randomised trial of metacognitive training for psychosis and depression
- a mood-tracking app used in a clinical trial
- suicide prevention, substance misuse and social media research
- a report on the social and economic costs of drug abuse in Hong Kong
- university teaching
Further afield
- a year with a mental health service in Tanzania: research, supporting the local service, and mental health training in schools
- early work with young children, including children with ADHD and autism
- neuropsychology research