Professor Karen Wright
Karen’s approach is dynamic and innovative as maintaining a contemporary and evidence-based approach to nursing, psychotherapy and education which is crucial to ensure that the service user is provided with the best possible approach to their care. She retired from her substantive professorial post at UCLan in 2023 and is retained as Professor Emerita, continuing to support PhD students and the specialist programmes and continues to practice as a CBT Psychotherapist, supervisor and assessor.
Since 2003 Karen has worked with both health service and academic colleagues and stakeholders to develop several acclaimed mental health curricula, including the MSc Personality Disorder, PGCert Investigating Serious Incidents, PGCert Conflict and Violence Minimisation, re-approval of the of the Pre-registration Nursing Programmes (including the addition of the Learning Disability field of practice), the Mental Health Wellbeing Practitioner (MHWB) post-grad programme, the Knowledge and Understanding Framework ( KUF) for the Offender Personality Disorder pathway . She was Chair of the Assessment Board for the School of Nursing at UCLan from 2015-2021.
Karen’s PhD thesis ‘An interpretative phenomenological study of the therapeutic relationship occurring between women admitted to eating disorder services and their workers’ established her position that the therapeutic relationship is pivotal to assisting the person with anorexia to commence on their journey to recovery and survival. She continues to work as a CBT psychotherapist with those experiencing eating disorder ensuring that evidence-based practice is delivered and that her work is grounded in the genuine experience of service users, their families, and their care team.
Her work, with Dr Ivan Mcglen in the development of PPEAT led to both Karen & Ivan being awarded ‘National Lifesavers’ awards and has had a significant impact on frontline police officers’ ability to recognise people with mental disorders rapidly and accurately. This has had a substantial impact on the numbers of people being referred to social services and enabled appropriate intervention without criminalisation, protecting these vulnerable people, the public and saving money. The Public Psychiatric Emergency Assessment Tool (PPEAT) is the only tool of its kind in the world and has been used by 123,000 police officers in England and Wales as well as other safeguarding agencies, including Denmark, Germany and Canada. In the form of the Vulnerability Assessment Framework (VAF), PPEAT has been adopted by the College of Policing as the national professional guideline for the assessment of mental vulnerability and illness. Consequently, this has been deemed to be a 4* REF impact case study.
PhD supervision:
Karen continues to supervise and examine doctoral students. She is a qualitative researcher with specific expertise in phenomenology and ethnography.
- PhD
- MA Interprofessional Issues in Health & Welfare
- PGDip (Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy)
- PGCert Personality Disorder
- PGCert Heath Research
- PGCert Education
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- BSc(Comb)Hons Nursing/Health
- RGN
- RMN
- I, with Dr Ivan McGlen, were named as two of the Nation’s Lifesavers, as a result of our work on the Public Psychiatric Emergency Assessment Tool (PPEAT) recognising us as two of the top 100 individuals or groups based in universities whose work is saving lives and making a life-changing difference to our health and wellbeing and were recognised as part of Universities UK’s MadeAtUni campaign.
- Personality Disorder
- Eating disorder
- ADHD
- Phenomenology
- Chair of a Regional NHS Research Ethics Committee (HRA)
- Associate editor of the Mental Health Practice Journal and a reviewer for a number of peer reviewed journals
- Nursing & Midwifery Council
- Accredited Member of the British Association of Cognition Behavioural Psychotherapists(BABCP)
- External examiner for the MSc Cognitive Psychotherapy Programme at the University of Salford
- PhD examiner ( on request)
- School Governor
Karen has conducted a range of research, most recently focussing on personality disorder, eating disorder and user involvement. Her own PhD was titled: A phenomenological study of the therapeutic relationships between women with anorexia and their workers within an eating disorder service. Her research methodology of choice is interpretative phenomenology , although she has also engaged in a range of qualitative methodologies including ethnography, discourse analysis and grounded theory
Use the links below to view their profiles:
- Mental Health Research Group
- Criminal Justice partnership
Email: Email:Professor Karen Wright
Use the links below to view their profiles: