Location: United Kingdom
Profession: Health Care Worker
About
I love eating bread after freshly baking it and sharing it with family/friends. I enjoy the therapeutic aspects of taking my time (&honouring the dough's time) while making baked goods as it helps me relax and de-stress. I bake for myself, my family and friends as well as my colleagues.
My Work
I am based in London, currently doing my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. I am passionate about mental health and part of my interest in this area has developed due to my deepening frustrations around the conventional approaches to mental health treatment (i.e. pharmacological over-prescribing). I am drawn to lifestyle medicine and the more sustaining and healthy treatment options it affords to patients accessing mental health services.
Passionate about Baking as Lifestyle Medicine
I want to be able to offer my patients an alternative approach to improving their mental health alongside talking therapies. An approach that is meaningful, inclusive and sustainable for them to implement as a wellness strategy and not just a reactive measure when crisis hits. Psychological well-being goes so much further than engaging with talking therapy in an isolated room, and I want people to feel connected to their food, to the community around and to the hobbies they engage in as a form of self-love (i.e. baking and sharing bread!). I want to contribute to field of research and demonstrate that there are alternatives! And shake up the status quo!
My Community
The gut microbiome and mental health are so closely linked, and being able to support people to implement the BALM protocol with provide them with so much more than a few distress tolerance strategies. It was provide them with nourishment, purpose and connection and that is far more meaningful than anything I can provide at the moment.
How I use BALM Protocol
I will use this knowledge in my doctoral research (SCED evaluating the BALM protocol in patients with clinical depression) as well as socially prescribing the protocol in my clinical practice.