The Mental Health Research Unit was set up in 1996 as a joint project between the University of Derby and what is now the Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust. I am extremely grateful for their vision and support in our work. The Mental Health Research Unit continues to seek research funds and engage in research into mental health difficulties. There are many people in my unit I would like to thank. Special thanks go to Corinne Gale (research psychologist and research coordinator) and Kirsten McEwan (research psychologist and statistician) for their extraordinary dedication, hard work and wonderfully friendly dispositions. Special thanks also go to Lesley Futter for her hard work with this manuscript and with the Mental Health Research Unit. Thanks also to our super-efficient Kelly Sims who has just joined us. We are deeply indebted to Keith Wilshere for his skilful management of our unit, encouragement on the compassion projects, and keeping us all afloat, as well as his brilliant bass playing and technical skills for Still Minds.
Thanks to Sue Procter for her help in our first study of compassion-focused group therapy. Thanks also to psychologists Sharon Pallant, Michelle Cree and Andrew Rayner for their compassion-focused in-patient work. Two years ago some colleagues and I also set up a charity which has the mission statement ‘To promote well-being through the scientific understanding and application of compassion’. If you go to the website at www.compassionatemind.co.uk, you will find lots of information, and you can download several of our publications. Key people have been fundamental to the development and support of this project, and special thanks go to my friend of over 30 years, Chris Gillespie. I would also like to thank the other board members: Chris Irons, Ken Goss, Mary Welford, Ian Lowens, Deborah Lee, Thomas Schroder and Jean Gilbert. Thanks to Diane Woollands for her skilful management of the website and board.
The University of Derby Psychology Department has been supportive, and thanks go to James Elander and in particular Frances Maratos for her support and expertise in fMRI, and enthusiasm for further studies on compassion with the universities of Aston and Glasgow. We are very excited about these studies; find out more on our website. Thanks also to Michael Townend for his enthusiasm and support for compassion-focused therapy. I would also like to thank Bob Leahy of the International Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists for his friendship and scholarship. I am also delighted to be able to thank the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies for their openness, support, friendliness and putting up with a quirky, evolutionary, archetype-and compassion-focused dude like me.
Nick Robinson and his staff at Constable & Robinson have been tireless in working to advance this series. They have been lovely to work with and special thanks go to Nick himself, Fritha Saunders for her soothing, and Eryl Humphrey Jones.
Last but of course not least, many thanks to my supportive family, Jean, Hannah and James, perhaps the biggest antidote to depression.
I would like to dedicate this book to all depressed people: may compassion help you light a candle in your darkness. I offer my immense gratitude to all those depressed people who have been honest and open and have educated and guided me in my therapeutic efforts.