Spotlight on Dr Nick Midgley, UCL Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology

This week the spotlight is on Dr Nick Midgley, UCL Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology.

What is your role and what does it involve?

One of the pleasures of working at UCL (although it can be a challenge) is that my role involves so many different things. I am Course Director for the MSc in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice, which was set up in 2011. The teaching on this two-year course is based at the Anna Freud Centre (AFC), a mental health charity based in north London, with a strong link to UCL. The course provides a grounding for those who want to go on to work in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), and draws on the academic excellence of UCL and the clinical expertise of the AFC.

I'm also the Academic Course Director for the PsychD in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, a four-year doctoral training that leads to a professional accreditation to work in CAMHS as a specialist child therapist, often working with the most damaged and vulnerable children in our society. In both courses, it is fascinating to see students developing practical skills, while also drawing on developmental and clinical theory, neuroscience and research - and using all of that to make a real difference to the lives of children and families.

The final aspect of my role at UCL is as a researcher, with a particular interest in qualitative methods and the study of child psychotherapy. It is always hard to find enough time to devote to this, especially as I'm part-time at UCL.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

My core training is as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I worked in the NHS for some years, before moving into the voluntary sector. I still practice as a child psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, and have been involved there in the development of mentalisation-based treatments for children and families.

I started as a clinical tutor at UCL way back in 2003, but only became a lecturer here in 2011, as the academic side of my role expanded. I still see myself as a clinician, a researcher and a teacher, and very much value the interaction between the different activities - although lately the clinical side has been squeezed.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

I'm immensely proud of the two courses that I run, both of which I was involved in designing and setting up. The team who are teaching on the course have been very creative, both in the format of the teaching, and the way in which the course is assessed (lots of role play!). It is very rewarding to see how our students develop and grow during their time at UCL, and to see the contributions they are making once they move on.

Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of you to-do list?

Recently I've been working on a multi-site, mixed-method study called the IMPACT study, in which we've been evaluating the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic support for teenagers suffering from severe depression. With two of my mentors at UCL, Professor Peter Fonagy and Professor Mary Target, this study has been the largest randomised, controlled trial of psychotherapy (psychodynamic and CBT) for teenagers to ever take place in the UK - a collaboration between UCL and the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester. 

As part of IMPACT, I've been leading a parallel, qualitative study (IMPACT-ME), in which we've carried out in-depth interviews with the young people taking part in the study, as well as their parents and therapists. It has provided us with a unique insight into the experience of depression among young people, as well as their journey through treatment. Once the findings of the clinical trial are out (hopefully in 2016), our aim is to draw on the perspectives of the young people and their families to help explain and give meaning to the quantitative findings from the trial itself.

As part of this study, we've recently been working with a team of professional film-makers and some of the young people and parents from the IMPACT study to make two short films about teenage depression and seeking help: Facing Shadows and Journey through the Shadows. At the start of July, the films were premiered at the British Film Institute on the South Bank, and it was one of the proudest evenings of my professional life! As well as the films themselves, the event included a talk from the mental health campaigner Jonny Benjamin, who launched the 'Find Mike' social media campaign following his search to find the stranger who prevented him from taking his own life, plus there was an interactive quiz on mental health led by a group of young people. 

The films were really well received and the families involved in making them were so proud. In the question and answer session at the end, they were so articulate about the need to address the stigma surrounding mental health issues for many young people, and how they hoped these films could contribute to that. The films are now on YouTube, and in the first week they've had over 3,000 views - thanks partly, no doubt, to Stephen Fry tweeting about them!

What is your favourite album, film and novel?

My background is in literature, so whatever else is going on, I try to make sure that I have a reading book by my bedside. Given my line of work, I enjoy reading books for children and young adults - recent favourites include Patrick Ness's The Ask and the Answer, Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, and almost anything by Neil Gaiman. Among books for grown-ups, Virginia Woolf's Orlando remains a favourite, and I recently discovered Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child - brilliantly terrifying!

My wife and son are both film fanatics, so I get to go to the cinema quite a lot too. Pixar's new Inside Out is a great film, and illustrates brilliantly so much of what I try to teach about the way families and relationships work (or sometimes don't work), and the challenges of growing up. I love the animation films of the Japanese director Hiyao Miyazaki, whose beautifully drawn films also challenge the simple 'good vs. evil' narrative of so many Hollywood movies for children. Films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are funny, disturbing, beautiful and wise...

What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?

My jokes are so bad that I have an agreement with my family that I'll tug at my ear-lobe when I make one, to make sure they realise I was trying to be funny! As I can't do that in print, I'll spare you the pain...

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

This might be obvious, but I would love to be able to invite Sigmund Freud to dinner, and discuss psychoanalysis and the unconscious with him. I'd probably invite along someone like Oliver Sacks, the brilliant neuroscientist who would be able to challenge Freud about some of his more controversial ideas. And if it all got too much for me, I'd sneak off into the other room while they argued it out, and would talk football and my beloved Leicester City with my other dream dinner guest, Gary Lineker!

What advice would you give your younger self?

Don't be so afraid.

What would it surprise people to know about you?

When I'm in the bath, I like to sing (or rather, chant) a 12th century Japanese songabout the buddha, which was taught to me by a drunk poet in the mountains of Japan when I was 18.

What is your favourite place?

There is a bench on Hampstead Heath, positioned between two silver birch trees and overlooking a children's playground, which was set up in memory of my father. It has an inscription on it from his beloved Shakespeare, who he insisted was 'the greatest Englishman that ever lived' (I argued about this with him vociferously when I was a teenager).

It is a lovely place to sit on a sunny day, and I can update him on all that he is missing.