Dr Gary Lamph is Head of Mental Health and Learning Disability Nursing in the Faculty of Health, Social Work and Medicine.  He is a Registered Mental Health Nurse and BABCP accredited Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist with over 25 year’s mental health clinical experience. He has worked across a wide range of mental health services, uniquely following new service developments in line with the policy led modernisation of mental health services and utilising evidence based psychological interventions. In 2011 Gary was the winner of the prestigious National Nursing Times Award in Mental Health, awarded for leading on the development of an innovative first of its kind in the UK, Multi-Agency Personality Disorder Strategy.

He is driven by a desire to influence and improve clinical service provision and is passionate about doing this through research and the education of our future workforce. Gary’s PhD was complete via a funded National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) funded Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship Programme at the University of Manchester.

He has a passion and proven track record for working alongside people with lived experience and embedding co-produced involvement through meaningful collaborations to support service development, teaching and research initiatives he has led.

He has worked at a number of higher education institutions including the University  of Salford as a Mental Health Lecturer and more recently Senior Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, where he was the Programme Director and led the development of the Northern Regional Offender Personality Disorder Higher Education Programme. 

Gary has had success in winning highly competitive innovation / enterprise bids and research bids, and expertise in developing and delivering innovative education programmes.

Gary’s research interests are largely focussed upon improving understanding and treatment experiences of people with personality disorder (complex emotional difficulties) and pedagogic research evaluations. He has held a NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Manchester where his PhD focussed upon understanding complex and long standing emotional needs in IAPT services.  Subsequently he has led several mixed methods pedagogic evaluations of novel educational programmes, systematic / scoping study reviews and qualitative studies. He is part of an international research team where he was UK PI for an international Covid-19 survey study, with partners from Norway, USA, Australia and Zambia. He has also been co-applicant on two NIHR-HTA funded trials including; The Clinical Effectiveness and Cost Effectiveness of Clozapine for inpatients with Borderline Personality Disorder: Randomised controlled trial, and more recently the ongoing The clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Structured Psychological Support for people with personality disorder: Randomised controlled trial.

Gary holds a position at the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) as the expert representative for personality disorder and nursing psychological interventions, and executive member and communications officer for the British and Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder (BIGSPD).

He is associate editor on three academic journals; The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice, Personality and Mental Health, and the Journal of Forensic Practice and for the past three years has been external examiner for the post graduate cognitive behavioural therapy programme at the University College Cork, Ireland.