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Our research elaborated for the first time how people actually go about recovering from depression. The work moved the field on from rhetoric advocating a `recovery ' approach, to elucidating what that practice actually entailed for patients. Amongst other contributions, we worked out the signposts involved in recovery, the `tools' used, and the potential of patient stories to contribute to recovery. This work had a number of direct impacts with consumers, practitioners, charities and policy makers. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence incorporated our work extensively into their guidance on depression (2010), and consumers `shared' it globally e.g. via Facebook.
Research carried out at Northumbria has explored the relations between culture and medicine during the eighteenth century, resulting in an improved historical understanding of the way in which culture influences the experience and treatment of illness. The impact has been significant for members of the medical profession and more widely for health professionals, as well as making a positive impression on the general public. It has also influenced local work in theatre and arts as therapy. The research continues to have implications for our understanding of both popular and medical discourses regarding illness.
This case study focuses upon discourse analytical research showing the importance of understanding communication activities in clinical settings, most particularly in mental health care and in transplantation medicine. The research described below has had an immediate impact upon educational and professional practice in medical settings in two European countries. The change that was engendered by the research can be seen both in educating clinicians in Poland as well as in changing communication practices of the British NHSBT.
The Emotional Test Battery (ETB) was developed by Goodwin, Harmer and others in Oxford from 1998 onwards. Notably, a person's performance on the ETB is sensitive to single doses of antidepressant drugs, even in healthy subjects, and without any change in mood. The ETB has played a key role in the success of P1Vital, a Clinical Research Organisation for experimental medicine, set up in 2004. The ETB has been responsible for ~60% of its business since 2008, worth over £9.5M and with 10 jobs created. Through P1Vital, the ETB has become a key part of the testing process for new antidepressants for several pharmaceutical companies, allowing substantial cost and time savings. For one antidepressant, the ETB results changed understanding of how the drug worked, and shaped its marketing.