Speakers

John has worked in senior NHS clinical and management roles. He was Principle Clinical Pharmacist in the Department of Community Psychiatry at Clatterbridge Hospital and was the manager of a Department of Health National Pilot Project in community mental health which won a Pharmaceutical Care award. He is now a freelance consultant.

He is a past chairman of the UK Psychiatric Pharmacy Group and a founding member of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy. He was a member of the WHO-Europe DepCare (Depression Care) Project and of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Mental Health Task Force.

He has written widely on mental health issues with over 80 peer-reviewed publications including book chapters and commentaries relating mostly to affective disorders and schizophrenia. He has presented at many international symposia and created and delivered educational packages related to the treatment of severe mental illness which have been used in the UK and internationally.

In 2015, his novel ‘The Death’s Head Chess Club’ was published. It concerns a gifted Jewish chess player in Auschwitz. It has been published internationally and translated into 12 languages; in 2016 it won the Waverton prize, the only UK literary award voted for by the general public.