Mental Health Life-course Lecture: Prof. Peter Fonagy, OBE

NIHR CLAHRC East of England and Eastern Academic Health Science Network are launching a lecture series placing a spotlight on the life-course approach to mental health and wellbeing.

Lectures will be wide ranging, spanning research, innovation, implementation and dissemination. They will be relevant to professionals working in mental health services, commissioners, policy and anyone interested in mental health service improvement and innovation.

Lectures will take place once a term. Lunch will be provided together with an opportunity to network with colleagues from across the region.

The first lecture is by Prof. Peter Fonagy, OBE:

The Development of Epistemic Trust: Systematic Reviews, Experimental Findings and Implications for Service Development

We are delighted to be joined by Professor Peter Fonagy, who will talk about his work on Epistemic Trust (an individual’s willingness to consider new knowledge as trustworthy) and specifically the journey from attachment theory to communication. The journey is via socio-biology and the evolutionary roots of the concept of epistemic trust.

We will explore the links of epistemic trust and parent - infant attachment, individual differences in the extent to which people are able to generate and experience epistemic trust. We will discuss the potential mechanisms underlying the enhancement of learning with social facilitation and consider the model of ostensive cueing as part of an account of why learning can be facilitated by a sense of personal recognition.

The talk will present a systematic review of studies of the influence of social recognition on learning for infants and young children and studies with adults that show that these mechanism remains operative in the adult mind. The clinical implications of this model will be explored in relation to service development and psychosocial interventions for both adults and children.

Lunch and networking will begin at noon, followed by the lecture starting at 12.45pm

Car parking can’t be booked – there are multi-storey car parks on site (Car Park 2 on the map), or there is also Park & Ride, with a bus stop 5 minutes walk away.

Please let us know about any dietary or other requirements by emailing: am2708@medschl.cam.ac.uk