Sarah Watts

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Sarah Watts is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and Clinical Lead with the Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Wellbeing Service (IAPT). She is also the NHSE/I Clinical Lead for IAPT in the West Midlands and the Programme Director on the Post Graduate Diploma in CBT run by Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust and Staffordshire University. Sarah completed her clinical psychology doctorate at the University of Birmingham in 2003 and has worked in adult mental health services since then, including services for older people in community and inpatient settings. She started working in IAPT in 2011 and has been able to use her special interests in service development, therapist training and workforce wellbeing in all aspects of the work she does. Outside of work, Sarah is usually found on the side of a hockey pitch, supporting her children who play for school, club and region.

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Supporting NHS colleagues following a coworker’s suicide: a postvention theory

Implementing structured protocols, enhancing training, strengthening support, and promoting open communication are all steps that can be implemented within workplaces to better support staff wellbeing after a colleague’s suicide.

In her debut blog, Brittany Oldale collaborates with Sarah Watts to summarise a grounded theory study that sought to create a postvention theory for how to support colleagues’ following a colleague’s suicide within the NHS.

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Beating the odds in recovery: does employment support benefit the outcomes of psychological therapy?

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Lucy Chilton and Sarah Watts summarise a case-control study looking at the effectiveness of employment support in combination with psychological therapies within NHS Talking Therapies.

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Accessing and engaging with NHS Talking Therapies: what can we learn from the pandemic?

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Jake Grange and Sarah Watts summarise a study using observational retrospective cohort data to investigate factors associated with access and engagement with NHS Talking Therapies services before, during, and after lockdown.

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Stratified care versus stepped care for depression: which is more effective?

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Sarah Watts reviews a cluster randomised clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of stratified care compared to stepped care for depression, which has implications for IAPT services.

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What are mental health staff doing to address the sexual health needs of service users? It’s complicated.

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Sarah Watts explores a small qualitative study that asked NHS staff about the sexual health and sexuality needs of people with serious mental illness.

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