Amy Blakemore

Overview

Amy is a Lecturer in Mental Health within the Division of Nursing, Social Work and Midiwfery, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester. She is interested in primary care mental health and improving care and self-management for people with mental and physical multimorbidity. 

Amy is currently involved with:

• PERSUADE: Preventing Depression in the Community by Voluntary Sector Providers

• Comparison of Active Treatments For Impaired Glucose Regulation: a Salford Royal Foundation Trust and Hitachi collaboration (CATFISH)

• Patient Self-Management  for COPD (PSM COPD)

• An evaluation of the Oldham IAPT Plus Active Monitoring Service for people with subthreshold depression

Amy contributes to teaching on the Advanced Practice Intervnetions in Mental Health Postgraduate Programme. 

Biography

Amy graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Psychology in 2004. She went on to train as a Primary Care Mental Health Worker in Bury Primary Care Trust and completed an MSc in Advanced Practice in Mental Health (APIMH Primary Care Pathway), with distinction. Her MSc dissertation was a review of the acceptability and feasibility of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a treatment for depression and anxiety in patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

During her MSc Amy developed a keen interest in research and took up a post as a Clinical Studies Officer for the Mental Health Research Network before taking up a post as a Senior Research Assistant on the CHOICE NIHR Programme Grant for Applied Research. Whilst working on the CHOICE NIHR Programme she also completed her PhD in the Centre for Primary Care, University of Manchester. Her PhD was a longitudinal cohort study of primary care patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which aimed to identify the psychological predictors of health related quality of life (HRQoL) in COPD. 

At the end of the CHOICE Programme Grant Amy joined the Centre for Primary Care, University of Manchester as a Research Associate. Here she worked across several trials of interventions to improve self-management in multimorbidity and of low intensity mental health interventions for patients with mental and physical multimorbidity. 

In January 2017 Amy joined the School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester as a Lecturer in Mental Health. Here she is working on the Advanced Practice Interventions in Mental Health Postgraduate Programme and developing her research interests as part of the Mental Health Research Group.