Passion to Purpose, Progress to Practice

Founded by a clinician (Manaan) and a social scientist (Chiara) based in Cambridge, UK, PROGRESS.guide aspires to translate the science of mental health into the art of compassionate care.

Support patients through:

Delivering training that draws on their strengths and aspirations for a life beyond illness

Equip professionals with:

Attitudes that draw on the person’s lived in experience of mental health for novel solutions
Knowledge of the latest evidence base
Understanding of complex mental health needs
Skills to provide person centred care
Confidence to deal with challenging situations

Support teams to:

Work collaboratively with the person and their natural circle of support.
Engage in reflective and mindful practice.
Engage in multidisciplinary and interagency working.

Support organisations to:

Complement and enhance existing skills of the workforce
Meet requirements of regulators and external bodies

Support society to:

Embrace positive mental health and preventative approaches.
Create communities that are more accepting of individual’s mental health needs.

Dr Manaan Kar Ray (Founding Partner): Trained in Oxford and worked in Cambridge as Consultant Psychiatrist, Manaan is passionate about recovery. He has extensive experience in suicide risk management. In his role as Clinical Director in Cambridge, he redesigned care pathways both in the community and inpatient setting making them safer and recovery oriented. In 2016 his work in the field of reducing coercion in care was acknowledged through a national patient experience award.

Dr Chiara Lombardo (Founding Partner): Working across Cambridge and London, Chiara is a Research Fellow in Global Public Mental Health; she is a Chartered Psychologist and holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Durham University. At the heart of her interests lies the promotion of mental health and she has extensive experience in conducting projects to support people who suffer mental health challenges to achieve and maintain the best possible quality of life.

Dr Tine Van Bortel (PhD, FRTC): Tine Van Bortel is Professor of Global & Mental Health at the Institute for Health and Human Development, University of East London and Director of Research in Global Public Mental Health at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge. She is also a registered professional Integrated Wellbeing Coach and Mindfulness Trainer, Mental Health Consultant with the World Health Organisation and World Economic Forum, Board Member of the Advancing Health Alliance, and an informal mental health carer. Passionate about promoting and improving mental health and best possible quality of life for all, Tine's work is firmly underpinned by value-based, asset-based, whole-person, whole-system, and human rights approaches.

Dr Zahoor Syed (MBBS, MRCPsych, MSc, PGDip): is a consultant psychiatrist in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. Trained in General Adult Psychiatry and substance misuse, Zahoor has been at the forefront of acute inpatient psychiatry and Psychiatric Intensive Care services within Cambridgeshire and Peerborough NHS Foundation Trust. He has special interest in military psychiatry and leads inpatient services for MOD. In his 8 years as Associate Clinical Director he led many innovative projects promoting person centred care. He is the appraisal lead for the trust’s revalidation programme for Consultants and has a special interest in continuing medical education.

Dr Monica Santos: is a locum consultant psychiatrist in the Cambridge Crisis Teams. Monica trained in Hospital de Magalhães Lemos in Porto and has an interest in improving access to care for everyone. She has extensive knowledge and experience of managing rapidly evolving mental health emergencies in the community and finding novel solutions to difficult clinical scenarios.

Dr Emma Kaminskiy CPsychol, PhD, FHEA, is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. Her primary research interests centre on how people utilise choice in psychiatric encounters and considerations of power and stigma in this context. She has a particular interest in participatory and co-production approaches to research.

Dr Sepehr Hafizi is a Consultant Psychiatrist working in CPFT. He trained in London and Oxford and attained a DPhil (Oxford) on ‘Brain Neurokinin-1 Receptors in Depression’. He has previously worked in Early Intervention in Psychosis, but is now at Fulbourn Hospital. He is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Associate Lecturer at Cambridge University. His interests include medical education and pharmacology with publications in neuroscience and psychopharmacology.

Expert Panel

WE ASPIRE TO:

We are a dedicated mental health training collaborative for healthcare professionals. Our courses are designed to instil best practice, improve performance and confidence.