Lynda Tait qualified with a First Class BSc (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Birmingham in 2002. She gained a PhD in Psychology before joining the Primary Care Clinical Sciences Unit in 2003 as a Research Fellow. Previous to this post Lynda was employed from 2001-2003 as a Statistics Adviser to students and staff members of the School of Psychology, University of Birmingham.
Lynda was awarded Chartered Scientist by The British Psychological Society and the Science Council in 2007.
Lynda’s interests include:
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Evaluating the benefits of self-care initiatives for serious mental illness
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Exploring mental health recovery and psychological adaptation to serious mental illness
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Investigating engagement with mental health services
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Exploring strategies to reduce mental health inequalities
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Primary and secondary care services for mental illness
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Global perspective on mental health
Lynda has experience in using quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research methods.
Lynda currently supervises a split-location, international PhD student who is investigating global mental health in a low-income country.
Lynda is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:
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Recovery from serious mental illness
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Mental health inequalities
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Global mental health
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The role of self-care in serious mental illness
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She also supervises a PhD student investigating social networks and transnational South Asian and African-Caribbean families
If you are interested in studying any of these subject areas please contact Lynda on the contact details above, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email: dr@contacts.bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)121 414 5005.
For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings.
RESEARCH THEMES
Global mental health, Mental Health Self-Care, Affective Disorders, Serious Mental Illness, Primary Care Mental Health
RESEARCH ACTIVITY
Primary Care Mental Health
Lynda has a particular interest in promoting recovery in psychosis and improving the quality of care and treatment people receive in mental health services. She developed a scale to measure engagement with services, which has been used in UK and international studies. It has been translated into various languages, e.g. Dutch, Norwegian, Taiwanese, and has been adopted by NIHME Knowledge Community for use by Early Intervention Services.
The development and evaluation of an educational intervention on first episode psychosis for primary care has also been a focus of study.
Self-Care
She has also developed research in partnership with MDF The Bipolar Organisation on self-care initiatives for bipolar disorder.
Mavaddat N, Lester H E, Tait L. (2009) Development of a patient experience questionnaire for primary care mental health. Quality and Safety in Health Care 18:147-152.
Lester H, Birchwood M, Freemantle N, Michail M, Tait L. (2009) REDIRECT: cluster randomised controlled trial of general practitioner education in detection of first episode psychosis. British Journal of General Practice 59(563):403-408.
Simon A E, Lester H, Tait L, Stip E, Roy P, Conrad G, Hunt J, Epstein I, Larsen T K, Amminger P, Holub D, Wenigova B, Turner M, Berger G E, O’Donnell C, Umbricht D. (2009) The international study on general practitioners and early psychosis (IGPS). Schizophrenia Research 108(1):182-190. doi: 10/1016/j.schres.2008.11.004.
Tait L. (2009) EDITORIAL: To disclose or not to disclose psychological problems to GPs. British Journal of General Practice 59(566):638-639. [Commissioned].
Tait L, Ryles D, Sidwell, A. (2010) “Strategies for engagement”. In P French, J Smith, D Shiers, M Reed, M Rayne, (eds). Promoting recovery in early psychosis: A practice manual. London, Blackwell, pp. 35-44
Blank DL, Bodansky DMS, Forbes A, Garde E, Story F, Roalfe A, Tait L. (2010) Influenza vaccination of future health care workers: a cross sectional study of uptake, knowledge and attitudes. Vaccine 28(29):4668-72. Doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2010.04.066.
Tait L, Heron J. (2010) EDITORIAL: Management of postnatal depression in primary care: a window of opportunity. British Journal of General Practice 60(580):801-802. [Commissioned].
Tait L, Beresford G. 2011 (in press). EDITORIAL: Generalised anxiety disorder: the importance of life context and social factors. British Journal of General Practice [Commissioned].