Author name: Susan Mary Benbow

Since retiring from my consultant role in the National Health Service, I have often described myself as having a portfolio of work, because I do various different sorts of work and, at any one time, may have commitments to work with several different organisations. This gives me interesting and enjoyable variety and flexibility in my […]

I wrote the last blog before I tested positive for COVID. So now, despite the fact our relative has moved nearer home, we still can’t visit. The hope was that the move would lead to more visits – not fewer! And it’s really strange to be cut off from someone. This is an age of

Are we post-COVID? I know lots of people in a range of contexts who have, or have just recovered from, COVID. At the same time, we are behaving as though the pandemic is history. How many people wear masks now? How many people are avoiding large gatherings? Are we resigned to living with COVID? How

In Our history – our heritage: Storthes Hall I wrote about my paternal grandfather’s older brother, James Stanley Garside, who was born on 6 May 1892 and admitted to Storthes Hall Asylum, West Yorkshire, in June 1906. Since then, I’ve discovered a bit more about him. Courtesy of the Lancashire Archives, I now know that

Thinking about history, both my own family history (see previous blog Our history – our heritage: Storthes Hall ) and the history of mental health care, I attended a webinar organised by the Royal Society of Medicine on role models and learning from the 1960s. This set me thinking: who have been my “role models”?

Earlier this year, with a colleague, I co-edited an edition of Context, ‘the magazine for family therapy and systemic practice’ (see this link for more information). Our edition focused on independent practice as a systemic therapist and people contributed some great articles. In the late stages, and as we put the articles together, it struck