Author: ISCHPblog

Looking Beyond “Good” and “Bad” Care: Using Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis in the Emergency Department

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Written by Bella van Hattum and Tracy Morison

Photo by Feng Sun on Unsplash

Emergency Departments (EDs) are often the first point of care for people experiencing pain and/or bleeding (a threatened miscarriage) in early pregnancy. Many patients present at the ED not simply with physical symptoms, but also with an emotional emergency that encompasses the fear, uncertainty and moral significance of potential pregnancy loss. Their care needs extend well beyond biomedical assessment. From the perspective of emergency healthcare providers, a threatened miscarriage is generally a low clinical priority, even if a patient shows distress. This mismatch between patient and healthcare provider perspectives can create complex challenges for both parties in systems designed to prioritise acute, life-threatening risk. 

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From wandering wombs to reproductive control: Why women’s health was never (and is never) neutral

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Written by Emily Young

Sexism in contemporary healthcare is often framed as a modern problem, stemming from a lack of training or insufficient research attention to women’s health. While these explanations are not wrong, they are incomplete. From a critical health psychology perspective, the marginalisation of women’s bodies is not an accident of modern medicine, but a feature of its foundations. The patriarchal logic that shapes how women’s bodies are understood, viewed, and governed today are embedded in the historical origins of Western medicine.

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Abortion Accompaniment as Reproductive Justice: Rethinking Care on the Island of Ireland

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Written by Anna Theresa Schmid

Photo by Diva Plavalaguna on Pexels

What image comes to mind when you hear the word “abortion”? Maybe it’s a woman staring at a positive pregnancy test, devastated. Or someone walking through protestors toward a clinic, face hidden from cameras. Maybe a sterile doctor’s office – fluorescent lights, silence. All of these images have a common thread: it’s a bleak situation, where the person at the centre is utterly alone.

Moving away from individualistic understandings of abortion

Particularly in Western societies, we tend to understand abortion as a private issue and rarely think about it as a shared experience. The dominant view of healthcare, and abortion in particular, is a deeply individualised one, focused on personal responsibility and medical authority. Across other parts of the world, though, and especially in Latin America, communal practices of abortion care have a long tradition, recently also becoming more present in research. For example, feminist groups in the region have shown how abortion accompaniment enables self-managed abortion in restrictive settings, transforming abortion care to be rooted in empathy and solidarity (Belfrage, 2024; Larrea & Veldhuis, 2025).

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Puberty blockers: why politicians overriding doctors sets a dangerous precedent

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Written by Jaimie Veale, University of Waikato

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

This article has been republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, and with permission from the author.

This op-ed responds to recent developments in Aotearoa New Zealand, where the Government has overridden clinical guidance to restrict access to puberty blockers for transgender young people. Although the policy change is local, the issue it raises – political interference in evidence-based healthcare and the resulting psychological impacts on young people and their whānau – has global relevance. We are sharing it here as part of broader critical conversations in health psychology about equity, clinical autonomy, and the wellbeing of gender-diverse communities.

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From early career to lifetime achievement: Winners of the 2025 ISCHP Career Awards

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Written by Gareth Treharne

At this year’s 14th Biennial International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) in Galway in July, a range of outstanding critical health psychology scholars were recognised at the 2025 ISCHP Career Awards ceremony. Picture this: a lively university bar filled with conference delegates, many with a pint of Guinness in hand; the band was yet to arrive, so the dancing hadn’t started; the crowd dutifully gathered for the Oscars of critical health psychology.

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Reflexivity: How to actually do it

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Written by Tracy Morison

Sunrise over Lake Wakatipu and Kawarau “The Remarkables” mountain range, Queenstown, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2016. Photo by Tracy Morison

Let’s be honest: reflexivity is one of the most overused and under-explained terms in qualitative research. We all say we’re being reflexive—often in a neat little paragraph in the methodology section—but what does that actually look like in practice?

This post is a practical (and hopefully honest) attempt to answer that question. It’s aimed at students and early-career researchers, especially those using feminist or critical qualitative methods, but may also be useful for more experienced researchers looking to deepen their practice. Think of it as a field guide to doing reflexivity in real life: not just writing about it, but using it to enrich your thinking and deepen your analysis.

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Finding refuge, making connections: ISCHP 2025 in Galway, Ireland

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Written by Siobhán Healy-Cullen and Jessica Tappin

In early July, the University of Galway’s School of Psychology hosted the 14th biennial International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) conference, bringing together 200 delegates from 31 countries. As early career researchers (ECRs), this was our first chance to meet with the ISCHP community face-to-face, and we happily embraced the 30-plus-hour journey from Aotearoa New Zealand to Ireland’s west coast.

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Critical Realism: Opening the door to enriching the evidence base of public health co-creation

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Written by Katrina Messiha

Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on Unsplash

In recent years, co-creation has become a widely used approach in public health research. This approach engages stakeholders such as local communities, policymakers and practitioners directly in the research process to develop interventions that are not only relevant but also sustainable and impactful. However, despite growing interest, many co-creation efforts in public health lack a clear theoretical foundation. There is often limited use of theory to guide how co-creation is done and how it can be evaluated effectively.

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Ostomates show how TikTok can be used to educate, reform and support online health communities

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Written by Craig Owen & Emma Butel

Young adults often turn to social media for health information. With over 1.6 billion active users, TikTok provides a powerful platform for communication among health communities.

Analysing 64 TikTok videos related to #ostomy and #IBD, we found that young ostomates (people with a stoma) use the platform to share vital education about stomas, share personal experiences and combat stigma. We now call on health professionals to recognise and support these educational efforts on TikTok.

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Balancing Tools and Trust: Rethinking Child Safeguarding in Health Settings

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Written by Lauren Alexis

Image source: Alex Green from pexels.com

Globally, an estimated 400 million children under 5 experience psychological or physical abuse at home (UNICEF, 2024). Over the past 5 years in England alone, there have been almost 3000 serious incidents of harm and deaths to children, with many more going unreported. Most children were known to primary health services, yet only 1 in 11 were on a child protection plan at the time (Department for Education [DfE], 2024). With organisations’ efforts to improve early recognition of children at risk in health settings, are we actually sacrificing personalised, equitable care for standardised processes that overlook the complexities of families’ lives?

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5 hours in qualitative research

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Written by Dave Nicholls. Re-published with permission from ParaDoxa

A recent article published in Physiotherapy Theory & Practice found that US-based physical therapy programs allocate, on average, just five hours to teaching qualitative research.

The article by Michelle Wormley and a team of US-based academics, including the venerable Gail Jensen, reported on a descriptive qualitative study of time spent learning about qualitative research across 70 US physical therapy programs.

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Co-producing with Care and Cake

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Written by Anjuli Muller

collage of images. Left to right: paper and coffee cup on desk looking towards window, people adding stick notes to a board, a bunch of care packages on a table, a cup of coffee and cake.
Left & Right; ‘table’ set up for some “Cuppa & Cake Sessions”, Top Middle: Using sticky notes to record thoughts on women’s health, Bottom Middle: ‘Care Packs’ ready to send to online session contributors.

“Cake is medicinal” I’ve often jokingly said, in moments when it felt like a justification for enjoying it was needed. Joking aside, there’s always an element of truth in these comments — cake can demonstrate manaakitanga (showing respect and generosity for others), care, support and solidarity. When accompanying conversations and interactions, cake can help develop social connectedness, and build relationships, especially when a cuppa is included. This can also make it easier to have vulnerable conversations, such as ones about our health experiences. It’s no wonder then that a ‘Cuppa & Cake’ underpins the methods used in my research as part of The Co-production Project.

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Enduring Hardships: The Life-Course Journey of Women in Kenyan Resource-Poor Urban Neighbourhoods

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Written by Joseph Mwita Kisito

Author’s photo: in a training on older persons’ use of modern technology for communication, organized in 2021 by KARIKA (Aged people Require Information, Knowledge & Advancement), a CBO supporting older people in Nairobi, Kenya. There were gender disparities in terms of modern technological use, with more men than women owning a smartphone, due to affordability issues.

It’s no secret that poverty affects everyone, regardless of gender. But, let us be real: girls and women from poorer backgrounds often bear a disproportionate burden. Talk of early pregnancies, teenage parenthood, HIV/AIDS, unsafe sex and sexually transmitted diseases, partner violence, sexual violence, lack of access to sex education services, and the list goes on. Empirical research has shown that, from socio-economic and cultural perspectives, poverty often presents different outcomes for girls and boys, with girls being particularly disadvantaged, not only in the present but across generations (Adomako, Zhou & Amarteifio, 2023; Ramalho & Chant, 2021; Ngidi et al, 2024).

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The Operative Word – Volume Two

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We are thrilled to announce that volume two of our ISCHP podcast, The Operative Word is about to kick off!

The Operative Word aims to offer invigorating discussion and thoughtful reflection on topics that have relevance for critical health psychology. At its core, this podcast is about providing a platform for ISCHP members and invited others to share their insights and reflections about subjects close to our hearts as critical researchers. 

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Reclaiming Dignity in Food Support: Addressing the Hidden Cost of Hunger

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Written by Carl Walker

This blog has been reposted from Cost of Living. Find the original post here.

Image: Rotherham: A display stand at a supermarket food bank collection for Trussell Trust foodbanks

“I felt very worried going in. I thought, do I need to give false details in case they actually report me and say, ‘This woman can’t afford pasta, can you take her son away.’ I was terrified.”

“It’s not easy to ask for help… and then when you do, you’re always worrying in the queue: Is somebody going to drive past that you know from the work? Is somebody going to phone my daughter and say, I’ve seen your mum at the food bank queue? It’s just constant… I just wasn’t comfortable with the whole experience at all.”

Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis, food insecurity has surged in the UK. Recent surveys indicate that 15% of all households, and a staggering 25% of households with children, face regular struggles to afford sufficient food. As more people turn to food banks and other community support, many still avoid seeking help due to the stigma and shame associated with charitable food aid. The charity sector, burdened by resource constraints, faces the dual challenge of responding to surging demand, whilst also supporting individuals who experience profound emotional trauma from food insecurity.

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