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

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

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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The Operative Word – Volume Two

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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AI-Human Collaboration: From Quant to Qual, Turning Data into Meaning

Written by Paulina Bondaronek and Siobhán Healy-Cullen

Image depicting AI-Human collab created using rather primitive prompting in Ideogram.

Machine-assisted topic analysis (MATA) aims to use the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence and combines it with the nuanced and rich insights derived from qualitative analysis. I call this a “meaningful AI-Human collaboration”. MATA was developed in response to a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic; I was tasked with analysing and providing actionable insights based on 16,000 free-text responses to the question “How could we improve the service” (rapidly). The service in question was the NHS Test & Trace, which managed the pandemic response in England. With only my eyeballs to rely on (…and my expertise as a Behavioural Scientist), I recognised the potential of technology to speed up this task.

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When ‘we’ is more than two: families and infertility in India

Written by Arushi Kothari and Parul Bansal

A child holds great value for individuals, couples, families and communities across the world. One only has to look at ancient art, literature, architecture to unpack the deep emotional and psychological significance that pregnancy, birth and parenthood has been imbued with across cultures. Thus childlessness, particularly due to infertility, has gained immense focus in the past 40 years, particularly with the arrival of advanced assistive reproductive technologies (ARTs). Within this complex interweb of medicine, desire and relationships, our work has focused on the experiences of low-income childless couples dealing with infertility in India. The narrative qualitative research involved in-depth interviews with 12 low-income couples seeking infertility treatment at a private IVF centre in New Delhi, India.

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Lies, Lies, it’s all Lies! Discussing Vaginal Cleansing Products from a Critical Health Perspective

Written by: Mariangela Del Monaco, Sarah Cappellaro, and Vaidehi Patel

Vaginal cleansing products such as douches, washes, sprays, and wipes have become extremely popular in the last few decades. Despite their popularity, these products may pose health risk to their users like yeast infections, urinary tract infections (UTIs), and bacterial vaginosis (BV). Could this mean people prioritize a “clean” vagina over a “healthy” vagina?

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Make Believe

Some inspiration for ways to think differently about healthcare practice

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

Those of you who had followed the Critical Physio blog before ParaDoxa started will know that I teach a postgrad course for experienced health professionals. The course is designed to get them to think deeply and critically about themselves as professionals, their profession, and the myriad others they work with. Crucially, it’s designed to get them to think in unfamiliar ways about work that has, for some, become stale through familiarity.

As part of the assessment, they produce six artefacts that can be in any medium, any style or form, but they are especially encouraged to express themselves without words. Periodically I’d post up some images from the last course to showcase some of the creative things they have produced as inspiration for the times when we all feel a little blocked.

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Cancer is increasingly survivable – but it shouldn’t depend on your ability to ‘wrangle’ the health system

Written by: Kevin Dew, Alex Broom, Chris Cunningham, Elizabeth Dennett, Kerry Chamberlain, and Richard Egan

Getty Images

One in three of us will develop cancer at some point in our lives. But survival rates have improved to the point that two-thirds of those diagnosed live more than five years.

This extraordinary shift over the past few decades introduces new challenges. A large and growing proportion of people diagnosed with cancer are living with it, rather than dying of it.

In our recently published research we examined the cancer experiences of 81 New Zealanders (23 Māori and 58 non-Māori).

We found survivorship not only entailed managing the disease, but also “wrangling” a complex health system.

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The Shock of the New? A review of the 2024 In Sickness In Health Conference 

By Liz McKibben

Photo by Phill Brown on Unsplash

Alright! Sign me up!  

This reaction was unusual for me. I don’t really like conferences. I’d rather sit snuggled up at home and read an article than watch somebody narrate their PowerPoint slides. They often feel like a self-serving platform that we attend just to plump up our academic CVs. Surely, I’m not the only person who gets unbelievably bored? Maybe this one will be different. I was seduced by the promise of shocking newness. 

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Complicating Chemsex

By Siobhán Healy-Cullen and Chris Noone

Image credit: The Andrey Rylkov Foundation 

In recent years, the phenomenon of chemsex, a practice involving the use of drugs to enhance sexual experiences, has become a topic of increasing concern (some would say moral panic; see Hakim, 2019) and research. Traditionally, this practice has been studied through a lens that emphasises potential harm and pathologises those who engage in chemsex. As noted by Møller (2023, p. 922) “chemsex research mostly approaches the phenomenon from the perspective of health, focusing on ‘problematic’ aspects that tend to overstate risks and obscure the complicated role that drugs play in people’s lives”.  However, a more critical perspective is emerging, viewing chemsex participants as valid sexual citizens engaged in a complex socio-cultural landscape.  

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Towards peer-led and person-centred care

By Bella van Hattum

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Ma te rongo, ka mohio;
Ma te mohio, ka marama;
Ma te marama, ka matau;
Ma te matau, ka ora.
Through listening comes awareness; through awareness comes understanding; through understanding comes knowledge; through knowledge comes life and well-being
.

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A Case for Absurdism in Critical Health Psychology

By Beck Lowe

Photo by cottonbro studio on pexels

It was during my second undergraduate year of Drama & Performance Studies over a decade ago – performing a dinner party scene where no one ate, and the characters became increasingly agitated for no apparent reason – that I first discovered my love of absurdism.

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Book Review – Migration and Health: Critical Perspectives

Written by: Heide Castañeda

London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-49043-7

This book offers a radical rethinking of the field by unsettling conventional ideas of mobility and borders to highlight the ways in which they produce health inequalities. Covering a wide range of topics, the text provides insight through a critical lens, and proposes areas for intervention along with an added emphasis on the need for future research to address the health inequities that affect migrants. It illustrates how a critical perspective can deepen our understanding of the relationship between migration and health, which remains a defining global issue of our century.

The text employs a critical approach to examine the structural conditions of inequality and larger historical and political processes, recognizing that exclusionary bordering practices increasingly occur away from physical points of entry. It posits the concept of migration as complex, tangled and multi-directional and underscores how migrant vulnerability can shape the lives of people in wider communities. Furthermore, it acknowledges diverse and intersectional standpoints, as well as shifting spatial and temporal influences. Chapters include coverage of health in transit; healthcare access and utilization; clinical encounters; communicable disease; labor and occupational health; gender and sexuality; immigration enforcement, detention, deportation; and the effects of forced displacement on refugee and asylum-seeker health.

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Counting the wrong sheep: why trouble sleeping is about more than just individual lifestyles and habits

By Mary Breheny and Rosie Gibson

Photo by Andisheh A on Unsplash

Sleep may seem straightforward – everyone does it, after all. But as many of us know, getting enough sleep is not necessarily a simple task, despite what you might read in the media.

How to sleep “properly” is a favourite topic of self-help articles, with headlines such as “Expert advice to get a good night’s sleep whatever your age” promising the answer to your nocturnal awakenings.

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Critical health and neurodivergent awareness

By Kathryn McGuigan

Neurodivergent awareness week internationally was March 13-19 (www.neurodiversityweek.com). This was a week to celebrate neurological differences, to raise awareness of the strengths and challenges that neurodivergent face.

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