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Clinical staff working in mental health services experience high levels of work-related stress, burnout and poor well-being. Increased levels of stress, burnout, depression and anxiety and poorer mental well-being among health-care workers are associated with more sick days, absenteeism, lower work satisfaction, increased staff turnover and reduced quality of patient care. Virtual reality (VR) relaxation is a technique whereby experiences of pleasant and calming environments are accessed through a head-mounted display to promote relaxation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of a study that assesses the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a multi-session VR relaxation intervention amongst mental health professionals, to improve their relaxation levels and mental well-being.

The study follows a pre–post-test design. Mental health staff will be recruited for five weeks of VR relaxation. The authors will measure the feasibility and acceptability of the VR relaxation intervention as primary outcomes, alongside secondary outcomes evaluating the benefits of VR relaxation for mental well-being.

The study aims to recruit 20–25 health-care professionals working in both inpatient and specialist community mental health settings.

Research indicates the potential of VR relaxation as a low-intensity intervention to promote relaxation and reduce stress in the workplace. If VR relaxation is shown to be feasible and acceptable, when delivered across multiple sessions, there would be scope for large-scale work to investigate its effectiveness as an approach to enable health-care professionals to de-stress, relax and optimise their mental well-being. In turn, this may consequently reduce turnover and improve stress-related sick leave across health-care services.

Negative attitudes towards “personality disorder” are common among mental health professionals. This study aims to design a psychoeducational training targeting attitudes to “personality disorder” for staff working in a London psychiatric hospital. Its impact on staff attitudes was evaluated.

Mental health clinicians were recruited from five acute psychiatric wards. Feasibility of implementing the training was measured. A free-association exercise explored baseline attitudes to “personality disorder” and visual analogue scales assessed staff attitudes pre- and post-training. Content analysis of staff feedback was carried out.

Psychoeducational training was found to be feasible, well-attended and highly valued by ward staff (N = 47). Baseline results revealed negative perceptions of “personality disorder”. Post-training, significant improvements in understanding, levels of compassion and attitudes to working with service users with a diagnosis of a “personality disorder” were observed. Staff feedback highlighted desire for further training and support.

The sample size was relatively small and there was no control group, so findings should be interpreted with caution.

The findings highlight the need for support for staff working with service users with diagnoses of “personality disorder” on acute psychiatric wards. Providing regular training with interactive components may promote training as a resource for staff well-being. Planning to ensure service users’ and carers’ views are incorporated into the design of future training will be important.

This study is innovative in that it investigates the impact of a brief psychoeducational training on “personality disorder” designed for mental health staff on acute psychiatric wards.

There is evidence that both hypnotherapy and virtual reality (VR) can be helpful in reducing perceived stress in the general population. This is a feasibility and acceptability trial of an intervention combining hypnotherapy and VR to establish its acceptability in students. This study aims to establish whether students found the experience acceptable, described any adverse effects and whether they reported feeling calmer after the experience.

The study was testing the hypothesis that students would attend the sessions and find the experience acceptable. A secondary hypothesis was that preliminary qualitative and quantitative evaluation of measures of stress and wellbeing would signal potential improvements.

All participants completed all three sessions. No side effects were reported. Visual analogue scales recorded each day assessing the immediate effect improved. At the end of the intervention, there was an increase in wellbeing of 2.40 (95% CI: 1.33, 3.53, p = 0.006), and a decrease in depression of 0.73 (95% CI: 0.40, 1.07, p = 0.010), reflecting large effect sizes of 0.76 and 0.83, respectively. Qualitative feedback was generally very positive.

This study is small with just 15 students and was over a short period of time. The recruitment method meant there was no way to establish whether the volunteer students were representative of the general student population in terms of mental wellbeing. There was no control arm.

The preliminary results suggest that a larger controlled trial is justified.

This VR experience may have benefit to university students and to the wider population.

This described the evaluation of a novel intervention for perceived stress combining hypnotherapy and virtual reality in a group of healthcare students, with promising results suggesting further evaluation is needed.

Although increased social time is associated with healthier lifestyles, autistic people often present in therapy with social time difficulties. Given the growing interest in digital interventions and their applicability for autistic individuals, a social time app could be beneficial to support autistic people to manage social time, but there is limited research in this field, especially that which involves people with lived experience. The purpose of this study was to use co-production to conduct consultations with expert clinicians about the relationship between autism and social time, and the future development of a smartphone app to monitor and support social time in autistic people.

A qualitative methodology investigated clinicians’ views on the relationship between autism and social time and potential development of a social time app. Clinicians (N = 8) participated in semi-structured interviews facilitated by a researcher with lived experience of autism.

Participants were psychologists and psychotherapists from a specialist autism service. Thematic analysis identified factors associated with social time, such as differences with neurotypical populations, need for balance with non-social time and gender differences. According to participants, advantages of social time were connecting with people and forming relationships, whereas challenges were limited social skills, anxiety and anger and frustration. Suggested features of an app were a user-friendly design, psychoeducational components and prompts and reminders. Potential advantages of the app were support outside of therapy, support in therapy and monitoring emotional responses, whereas challenges were task completion and personalising content.

Findings reinforce the importance of a balance between social and non-social time for autistic people, which could be monitored and supported using a social time app. Clinicians could incorporate use of this app within psychological therapies to support emotional regulation and general functioning.

Auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices”) are a relatively common experience, which is often highly distressing and debilitating. As mental health services are under increasing pressures, services have witnessed a transformative shift with the integration of technology into psychological care. This study aims to narratively synthesise evidence of technology-enhanced psychological assessment and treatment of distressing voices (PROSPERO 393831).

This review was carried out according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Science were searched until 30th May 2023. The Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) tool assessed methodological quality of studies.

Searching identified 9,254 titles. Fourteen studies (two assessment studies, twelve treatment studies, published 2010–2022, n = 1,578) were included in the review. Most studies were conducted in the UK, the USA or Canada. Technologies included avatar therapy, mobile apps, virtual reality, a computerised Web-based programme and a mobile-assisted treatment. Overall, technology-enhanced psychological assessments and treatments appear feasible, acceptable and effective, with avatar therapy the most used intervention. EPHPP ratings were “strong” (n = 8), “moderate” (n = 5) and “weak” (n = 1).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic review to investigate these technologies, specifically for distressing voices. Despite the relatively small number of studies, findings offer promising evidence for the clinical benefits of these technologies for enhancing mental health care for individuals with distressing voices. More high-quality research on a wider range of technologies is warranted.

This paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself.

Two extant stories: Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War are taken, along with the cultural archetype of the American West gunslinger to explore the gender aspects of change. The Marks and Spencer case is analysed using the corollary patriarchal narrative of Sleeping Beauty, a story whose organising logic is revealed as one of concern for patriarchal lineage, and legitimate succession. The paper, draws on the Marks and Spencer principals' memoirs and biographies.

Sleeping Beauty is shown as a narrative saturated in misogyny, aggression and violence. This violence, which is shown to characterise the Marks and Spencer case, is amplified in the second narrative, the Trojan War, in the highly personalised battles of the über‐warriors of The Iliad. The paper concludes that violent, hyper‐masculine behaviour creates and maintains a destructive cycle of leadership lionisation and failure at the company which precludes a more feminine and possibly more effective construction of change management.

Demonstrates how M&S, gendered from its birth, its development through the golden years, the crisis, its changes in leadership and its recent change management has attempted to respond to its changing environment.

Can (and should) strategy scholarship attempt to find general prescriptions for business strategy that are applicable to all firms across all business conditions? We suggest that a universal theory of business strategy is a chimera: attractive but completely illusory. Our argument is based on two fundamental insights namely, organizations do not automatically adopt all practices and activities that could benefit them (even if knowledge about those activities is in the public domain), and theories and empirical work can address portions of the strategy problem usefully without attempting or achieving a general theory of strategy. Based on this, we believe strategy scholarship can fruitfully build on a variety of mid-range theories to offer three things from a prescriptive standpoint: (1) understanding the structure and processes inherent in organizations and markets; (2) offering productive ways to frame and analyze problems; and (3) offering recommendations for stratagems that appear successful. More generally, organizations might find immense value in strategy scholarship that offers specific tools, prescriptions, and alternative ways of looking at a problem, and that raise performance, on average.