Speakers

The Reverend Je Kan Adler-Collins

Dr. Je Kan Adler-Collins was born in the United Kingdom and entered the British Military, where he trained as a Registered Nurse in the Royal army Medical Corps. Medically discharged in 1990 he developed an interest in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and how they could relate to nursing practice and education. He served on a Government Steering Group which started him on his life work of researching standards and teaching in Complementary Alternative Medicine and healing. His studies have taken to many different cultures and countries and in 1995 he became ordained as a Japanese Buddhist priest of Shingon Shu ( Koyasan) and brought his Buddhist research into his practice of a nurse in terminal care and mental health. He took his PGCE at Bath University College in 1997 and Masters in Education in 2000 at Bath University in Education and moved to Japan in 2000 where he started to build his own temple and healing centre in the mountains of Kyushu, South Japan. He worked with living action research approach to education and life enquires and completed his PhD at Bath (Education) university in 2007. Working as an associate professor of nursing at Fukuoka Prefectural University he introduced the first healing curriculum for Japanese nursing using safe touch, and body work. He travels the world lecturing on creating healing and therapeutic spaces both in the classroom and in nursing practices with an interest in energy healing research and curriculum development within China, Tibet and Thailand using living action research accounts of practice as evidence of learning. His research interests are varied; from looking at indigenous forms of knowing and wisdom in stories and storytelling, to investigation healing process and properties of herbs and healing ceremonies. 

Sarah Gordon is the co-founder and current sole director of CASE Consulting. Established in 2000, Case is a consumer directed and working company that provides services for the development of an improved mental health sector and societal perceptions of mental health from a consumer focused perspective.

Sarah identifies as a person with experience of mental illness. This experience shaped her university study with the areas of medical law and bioethics being the focus. Combining this theoretical education and personal experience, Sarah entered the workforce as a consumer advisor to mental health services in 1988.

Sarah is currently lead researcher of Taku Reo Taku Mauri Ora My Voice My Life, the three year project to develop a self-assessed consumer outcome measure for Aotearoa/New Zealand. The measure will be used by mental health consumers/tangata whai ora to reflect and communicate on their own mental health outcomes and to inform ongoing mental health service development.

Dr Jacqueline Short is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist and Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Otago. She is also a UK-trained general and psychiatric nurse. It was her experience whilst working in medium secure environments which made her particularly aware of the marginalisation of women in secure settings and the paucity of gender-sensitive approaches to treatment and service provision. Training in forensic psychotherapy at the Portman Clinic, London, provided further insight into the internal world of ‘disturbed’ women and the importance of attachment theory. Jackie and her team established the first purpose-built medium secure service for mentally disordered female offenders in Wales, in 2001. Studies in criminology and social policy provided further understanding of female offending and prompted her involvement with the Department of Health’s national strategy for women’s mental health in 2002/3. Jackie is working on the development of services for female mentally disordered offenders in New Zealand. She has been working with women at the Central Regional Forensic Mental Health Service, Porirua, New Zealand, since her arrival in September 2004 and is the visiting psychiatrist to Arohata Women’s Prison. She is currently researching the differences between women in secure mental health services in New Zealand and those in Wales.