NIDUS-UK is the registered charity (Charity No. 1154650) supporting the development of nidotherapy and reform of mental health services in all countries of the world. It also supports the workshops that have been held every year since 2006. Currently it is supporting three projects, one in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India, the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Comprehensive Mental Healthcare which celebrated its 4th anniversary in 2014. The Director of the Institute, Dr Ibrahim Khaleel, was in need of a great deal of support in the early years of its life as there were insufficient paying patients to support the care of all who attended (most of whom cannot afford to pay). We are glad to say that the Institute is now breaking even financially, but it is keen to expand further and needs further funds. Ibrahim has recently set up a charity (Empower) to support the next phase of its expansion with the addition of new buildings to add to the hospital services of the Institute. This is being supported by a crowdfunding initiative.
The second project, supported by Porto Montenegro and a grant from the predecessor of NIDUS-UK, HAMLET-GIP, has involved the training of Montenegrin social workers and occupational therapists in both nidotherapy and modern community health practice. This has been coordinated by Dr Maja Ranger in Montenegro and Professor Peter and Dr Helen Tyrer in the UK, and has already led to the opening of a new day hospital in the town of Nicsic.
The third project is based in the East Midlands and involves several components. Its intention is to raise awareness of the problems encountered by people with personality difficulties and offer new forms of management, many of them involving environmental change and nidotherapy. This involves helping health professionals to be more aware of personality as a separate part of assessment and includes training in the new ICD-11 classification of personality disorder. It is also promoting adaptive changes and acceptance therapy. A major part of the project will be in Boston in Lincolnshire but some elements will be taking place across yah rest of the county and in Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust.
As part of these developments we have purchased an old Victorian School in the village of Cotham (it only had 20 pupils) and are converting this into a Nidotherapy Advice and Training Centre. More will follow as the development takes place.
The Trustees of NIDUS-UK are:
Professor Peter Tyrer, Emeritus Professor of Community Psychiatry at the Centre for Psychiatry, Imperial College, London
Dr Helen Tyrer, Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health, Imperial College, London
Dr Maja Ranger, Consultant Psychiatrist in Rehabilitation, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Dr Jed Boardman, Senior Lecturer in Social Psychiatry and Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and Lead on Social Inclusion at the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Ms Sandra O’Sullivan, Research Delivery Manager, NIHR Clinical Research Network, North West London
Ms Kaatje Lomme, Project Manager, NIHR Clinical Research Network, North West London
Mr Steve Watson, photographer, Newark, Nottinghamshire
Dr Catherine Gardiner, general practitioner, Rochester, Kent
Mr Steve Cawte, dramatist and poet, Lincoln, Lincolnshire
Dr Rosalind Watts, clinical psychologist, London
Dr Peter Carter, former Chief Executive, Royal College of Nursing, Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire
The bank account of NIDUS-UK is with the Cooperative Bank. NIDUS-UK is linked to the Global Initiative in Psychiatry (GIP), based in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and has an associated account for the Jim Birley Scholarships, set up in memory of the late Chairman of GIP, Dr James Birley. PT is an examiner for the scholarships annually.
You can make single or regular donations to NIDUS-UK using the DONATE BUTTON on the menu of the web-site. As we do not have any regular source of income apart from book royalties our expansion is dependent on donations.
One of the related activities of NIDUS-UK is the production and performance of operettas involving actors and singers of all ages and talents, and the particular aspect of nidotherapy that this promotes is ‘inclusion’ – the ability to bring everyone down (or up) to a common level whereby status and position do not matter and the play dictates the terms. This is an excellent means of eliminating the standard hierarchies in mental health practice.
Under the heading of ‘Operettas‘ you can see an example if this. ‘Browning’ is an operetta describing the 1845 romance of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. The performers include psychiatric patients with major mental disorders, professors of psychiatry, consultant psychiatrists, students, children and other health professionals, and with a jazz musician (Colin Dudman) and a former conductor (Daniel Tomkins) keeping all in time. Most observers would be hard put to differentiate between these groups when seeing the operetta. More recently, we have hosted seven performances of the Newarke Canterbury Tales in Newark, Collingham, Southwell, Hawton, Stamford, Rochester and Canterbury, so retracing the steps that Newark pilgrims took when walking to Canterbury to honour the martyred Archbishop, Thomas a’Becket.
Nidotherapy 