Site Development

Collaborative development

Responsibility for development of the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust student depression website project was contracted to a team based at the Royal Holloway University of London counselling service. The website development project was conceived as a collaborative action research project using a focus group of student consultants who had themselves experienced low mood, depression or suicidal thoughts.

Development team

• Principal developer and project manager

  Denise Meyer is a counselling psychologist, BACP accredited counsellor, and former acting head of counselling at Royal Holloway University of London. She has drawn on 10 years of working as a university counsellor with many students affected by depression. The website development project forms part of her research towards a D.Psych from the Middlesex University and the Metanoia Institute, and was subject to programme and ethical approval by these institutions. Intellectual property right, title and interest in the text, cartoon illustration and presentation concept of the site are retained by Denise Meyer (see site philosophy and terms of use).

• Student consultants

  Ten student consultants generously contributed their expertise in tackling depression through provision of detailed accounts of their own experiences and comprehensive involvement, through an email based focus group, with every aspect of the site development. Many other students contributed their experiences in interviews or written accounts. Many thanks to all of these students whose contributions are central to the achievement of the site. To protect their anonymity they cannot be thanked in person.

• Validation team

  The validity of the information and advice offered on this site has been checked and endorsed as of August 2005 by an independent validation team convened by Prof. Mike Berger, Emeritus Professor and former Director of the Clinical Psychology Doctorate programme in the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway University of London. Other members of the team, all active NHS clinicians, were Dr Alex Doig, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Dr. Richard Moore and Dr Jacquie Hetherton, both Chartered Clinical Psychologists.

• Research assistants

  Gillian Sedgwick is a BACP accredited counsellor in schools and private practice, formerly associate and locum counsellor at Royal Holloway University of London. She dealt with student consultant applications, conducted face-to-face interviews and offered psychological support to focus group participants throughout. Lalla Hitchings efficiently produced interview transcriptions.

• Original cartoonist

  Guy Rousseau of Cards by Guy Ltd is a consultant anaesthetist and part-time cartoonist and illustrator. Copyright for the original cartoon illustrations on this site is retained by him.

• Technical design

  Technical and graphic design by Mirata Ltd website design.

Project steering group

Brig Michael Lord of the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, Dr Rob Waller of Leeds University, and Nigel Humphrys, Charlotte Halvorsen and Ken Ewings (all of the Heads of University Counselling Services group).

Thanks

Thanks also to the many people who played less official, but no less crucial, supporting roles at various stages in the development of the site: Duncan Murray, Lynda Gething, Natalie Norton, Jenny Wordley, Sarah Brown, Suzanne Roger-Lund, the Browns and Duggals, and Gay Gray and Christopher Butler.

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