Hannah is a mental health campaigner, activist and entrepreneur who took the post of Design in Mental Health Network CEO in January 2023. Her writing, enterprise leadership, films and storytelling on the subject of mental health and identity have led to recognition; winning the Stelios Foundation Disabled Entrepreneur Award, featuring on BBC and in the Evening Standard, and being mentioned by the minister for Disabled People in the Houses of Parliament. She has been involved with the Design in Mental Health community since 2008.
About Us
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Hannah Chamberlain
CEO -
Phillip Ross
Chair -
Jonathan Campbell
Vice Chair -
Phil Barsby
Director & Finance Lead -
Beatrice Frankel
Director -
Cath Lake
Director -
Professor Steve Brown
Director -
Professor Paula Reavey
Director -
Lianne Knotts
Director -
Katharine Lazenby
Director -
Richard Brown
Associate -
Jennifer Aspinall
Associate -
Kevin Gorman
Associate -
Karen Howell
Associate -
Vicky Taylor
Associate -
Stephen Parker
Associate -
William Wang
Associate -
Francis Pitts
Associate -
Alex Caruso
Associate -
Jenny Gill
Chair Emeritus -
Joe Forster
Chair Emeritus

Phillip Ross
Chair
Philip Ross joined the DIMHN board in 2013, and was elected as Chair in 2020. He supports DIMHN’s international workstream and was instrumental in the development of the new testing standard, INFORMED CHOICES. Phil’s drive to bring the testing standard to launch was a frustration shared across the industry, of the lack of repeatable and replicable product testing, leading to a scarcity of reliable information as to product performance.
Phil is Co-Founder and Director of Safehinge Primera, a doorset and hardware manufacturer helping architects, estates and clinical staff improve mental health environments by resolving some of the biggest safety issues and barriers to empowering patients. He shares Safehinge Primera’s purpose – to design for good and help protect people through vulnerable times.

Jonathan Campbell
Vice Chair
Jonathan is a Chartered NHS Director of Estates and Facilities with over 25 years’ experience in the design and delivery of mental health, acute and community services.
He is a firm believer of the importance of the environment for recovery and that safe, robust and secure environments must also be therapeutic and healing.
As part of his role at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Jonathan has responsibility for all hard and soft FM services, sustainability, health and safety and capital development.

Phil Barsby
Director & Finance Lead
Phil is Director of Business Development for Intastop Ltd, having been part of the company for over 20 years. Phil’s vision for the future encompasses a drive to ensure regulations around mental health products continues to be at the forefront of legislation. For Intastop, his aim continues to be delivering exceptional customer service whilst addressing the needs of changing industry and environmental demands through a programme of product enhancement and development.

Beatrice Frankel
Director
Beatrice is a Trustee of the Design Council, member of the Government High Street Task force, non exec director at Stockport NHS FT and member of the Department for Levelling up Housing and Communities expert panel. She is a NHS Design champion and as Chair of MerseyCare FT oversaw the building of five new hospitals, based on an innovative user centred approach. Beatrice has an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon.FRIBA) awarded for her work in Design and regeneration.

Cath Lake
Director
Cath is an architect and mental health lead for P+HS Architects, with over 20 years’ practical experience in the design and delivery of mental health facilities.
She has a hands-on approach and has delivered a wide range of projects all of which share an ambition to improve mental healthcare provision. Experience includes detailed design and construction expertise relating to Dementia, Acute, Learning Disability, CAMHS, Secure and Specialist services. ‘My passion for designing places that really make a difference keeps me energised every day.’

Professor Steve Brown
Director
Steve is Professor of Health and Organizational Psychology at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University. His research interests are around service user experiences of secure mental health care and social remembering within marginalised and excluded groups. He is author of Vital Memory and Affect: Living with a difficult past (with Paula Reavey, 2015, Routledge), Psychology without Foundations: History, philosophy and psychosocial theory (with Paul Stenner, 2009, Sage) and The Social Psychology of Experience: Studies in remembering and forgetting (with David Middleton, 2005, Sage).

Professor Paula Reavey
Director
Paula Reavey is Professor of Psychology at London South Bank University, research lead and consultant on projects at the Maudsley and Royal Bethlem hospitals and honorary research consultant at St. Andrew’s Healthcare. She has co-edited two volumes, New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse: Sexual Scripts and Dangerous Dialogues (with Sam Warner, Routledge, 2003) and Memory Matters: Contexts for Understanding Sexual Abuse Recollections (with Janice Haaken, Psychology Press, 2009), and a sole edited volume, Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research (Routledge, 2011 – now in its second edition).

Lianne Knotts
Director
Lianne is a Director in Medical Architecture’s Newcastle upon Tyne studio. A senior architect, Lianne has over 16 years’ specialised experience in the design and planning of healthcare buildings with a particular interest in design for mental health. This expertise has led Lianne to work on a wide range of acute and forensic mental health projects across the UK and in Canada, with a focus on effective stakeholder engagement and leading early project design stages.

Katharine Lazenby
Director
Katharine Lazenby is a Project Manager at East London NHS Foundation Trust and an expert by experience. She delivers mental health training to health and social care staff in North East London and is a visiting scholar at London Southbank University, lecturing on subjects including psychologically informed environments. She has spoken at a number of national conferences about her lived experience of mental health treatment and recovery and advocates for coproduction to create excellence in mental healthcare design.

Richard Brown
Associate
Richard is Director of Estates and Facilities at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. He is an experienced, collaborative Estates professional, with a strong commercial and strategic approach to managing teams, projects, and master planning. Richard has a Chartered Engineer, Project Management, Design, Construction, FM, and Accountancy background across a number of sectors including Healthcare, and owner of a consultancy business.

Jennifer Aspinall
Associate
Jen is an experienced Design Manager with Integrated Health Products (IHP), working predominately in the mental health sector. Over the last number of years, Jen has worked closely with Trusts and suppliers to specifically develop existing mental health products and methods of construction in order to mitigate historical issues. This has led to numerous product enhancements, ultimately leading to a safer environment.

Kevin Gorman
Associate
Kevin is the Chairman and owner of Britplas. He is the multi-award-winning inventor of products that have had a positive effect on patient safety and wellbeing. He has worked on countless mental health projects worldwide, both new build and refurbishments, and has garnered a great deal of experience and a large network of knowledgeable friends along the way.
He is one of the founder members of DIMHN and has been right at the heart of the Network’s formative years. Heavily involved in the original Better Bedroom Initiative, Kevin conceived the testing standards initiative. He stepped down from the board in 2016 and received the first ‘Outstanding Contribution Award’ from his fellow board members.

Karen Howell
Associate
Karen is a Chartered Landscape Architect with over 35 years’ experience. She is Managing Director of Iteriad, a DiMHN member and landscape design practice specialising in the design of outdoor spaces for mental health and healthcare environments. Karen’s interest is in creating sensory spaces that aim to touch nature and that capture a special spirit of place, for all specialisms including Dementia, Learning Disabilities, Acute, Secure and CAMHS.

Vicky Taylor
Associate
Vicky is an experienced Interior Designer, who has spent 19 years working in the Mental Health sector. Following 14 years as Lead Interior Designer and later an Associate with Gilling Dod Architects, Vicky Joined Teal Furniture in early 2018.
With a passion for furniture design, and an absolute understanding of the crucial role it can play in creating safe, non-clinical and calming environments, Vicky has more recently joined Knightsbridge Furniture as National Business Development Manager. Now collaborating with partners across multiple sectors, Vicky is keen to explore how styles, trends and innovations from the wider world of contract furniture and Interior Design can positively influence interior choices within mental health settings.

Stephen Parker
Associate
Stephen Parker is a licensed architect in the United States and dedicated Behavioral Health Planner at Stantec, serving as mental health design subject matter expert for North America and beyond. His projects range from community-scale recovery centres to expansive mental health campuses, with work ranging from China, India, Kenya and across the US & Canada.
As the former Co-Chair of the AIA (American Institute of Architects) Strategic Council’s Mental Health+Architecture Incubator and co-author of the US Department of Veterans Affairs new Inpatient Mental Health Design Guide, Stephen is a firm believer in “architect as advocate”, service leadership and dignity-driven design research for communities in crisis.

William Wang
Associate
William is an architect and a healthcare researcher, working for Llewelyn Davies. He has developed mental health patient facilities in the NHS and contributed to the development of new CQC guidelines. He was shortlisted for the Design in Mental Health Network award and his work has been exhibited at the European Healthcare Design Conference.
He spent ten years of his architectural career in the cultural and commercial sectors, before completing a Masters of Research degree in Healthcare and Design in 2019, focusing on mental health care. For him, the most rewarding aspects of research are the personal and in-depth engagements with patients. As a design professional, researcher and service user, William has a grasp of the challenges in healthcare from a range of perspectives and is keen to see improvements in the industry which are patient centred.

Francis Pitts
Associate

Alex Caruso
Associate
Alex is an architect and founder of ACA+I Ltd. He has led the design of healthcare facilities in England, Spain and his native Italy, where collaboration and innovation are key drivers. He is dedicated to high quality design and sustainability standards to define project briefs. A member of the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium, Alex sees design for Mental Health and Social Care as “lifelong learning”, continuously offeings fresh opportunities for form to follow function whilst stimulating the senses.

Jenny Gill
Chair Emeritus
Jenny became Chair Emeritus after 7 years as Chairman of DiMHN. She has an NHS management background followed by 20+ years as a healthcare planner, specialising in mental health.
Jenny was the Department of Health’s technical author for Health Building Note (HBN) 03-01 – Adult acute mental health units and 03-02 – Facilities for child and adolescent mental health services. She was also co-author alongside the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (NAPICU), for ‘Design Guidance for Psychiatric Intensive Care Units 2017’.

Joe Forster
Chair Emeritus
Co-founder, past chair and former president of DIMHN, Joe now has the honorary title of chair emeritus. As with DIMHN’s own board, experts by experience are central to the leadership and running of all aspects of our mental health care provision. Throughout his whole clinical and research career, and now in consultancy and education, Joe has been guided, challenged and inspired by some of the most thoughtful, outspoken and innovative of them.