SMHRN and University of Edinburgh - Research Training Day review

On the 27th September, SMHRN and the University of Edinburgh co-hosted their first Research Training Day for people interested or involved in mental health research.

The event was attended by over 40 people from across Scotland, with varying amounts of research experience, and from a range of NHS and academic backgrounds including nursing, psychiatry and psychology.

Speakers on the day included Prof Stephen Lawrie (Brain Imaging), Prof Andrew McIntosh (Genetics), Prof Jeremy Hall (Epi-genetics), Dr Alan Carson (Epidemiology), Dr Chris Burton (Complex Interventions), Dr Pippa Thomson (Bio-informatics), Prof Gordon Murray (Statistics), and Prof Andrew Gumley (Clinical Psychology).

Speakers presentations available on request. Please email the network administrator to request these.

Feedback on what people gained as a result of attending:

"An excellent insight into the current research being undertaken and the different methodologies"

"Good to get some contact details I can use to see if I can get involved"

"I found the day helped to inspire continued involvement in research - a very good day thank you!"

"This renewed my interest in developing a complex intervention study"

"Vastly improved understanding of SMHRN's role/focus/capacity to help and a lot of practical knowledge from individual speakers"

Possible future events and workshops

• Mental health research for beginners
• Working up your research idea: methodology, statistics, funding, and user involvement clinics
• Research Fair: meet existing researchers to see how you could get involved in their studies
• Involving service users in research

We are hoping that this training event will be the first of many. Future events will be more interactive and might focus on specific research areas, or be pitched at people at a particular stage in their research career. We would welcome your ideas about the kinds of training events that you would find useful, so please do get in touch. Please contact the SMHRN team if you would like to be added to our mailing list to hear about future events

Clinical Research Facilities

• Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility (Edinburgh)
• Glasgow Clinical Research Facility
• Aberdeen Clinical Research Facility
• Tayside Clinical Research Facility
• Centre for Health Science (Inverness)