Dr Amber Ruigrok is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester and a Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE. Amber contributes to the BSc Psychology and BSc Cognitive Neuroscience & Psychology programmes and is Year 2 Lead for the BSc Psychology. Amber also leads on several projects around inclusive education and use of co-production in teaching and scholarship with the aim to improve students’ teaching and learning experiences. 

Dr Rebecca White is a teaching- focused Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester and a Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE. Rebecca teaches on the BSc Psychology and BSc Cognitive Neuroscience & Psychology programmes and is Co-Director of Student Experience for the BSc Psychology. Rebecca’s research interests are qualitative methods, and romantic relationships in the context of mental health.

Although one in five adults in the UK are currently living with a common mental health condition, they will not all receive the same access to, or quality of care. Inequalities in the access to, and support people receive for their mental wellbeing is a big problem within our healthcare system. For example, people from different ethnic backgrounds are less likely to receive support for mental health difficulties compared to people with a White British background.

On the BSc Psychology, many of our students would like to go into clinical psychology or other areas of psychology that directly support people to improve their mental health. We believe that it is imperative for our diverse student body to be familiar with the historical background of mental health treatment and how this may influence people’s current attitudes towards and experiences of support. We hope this understanding will help our students to appreciate and contextualise where views and hesitations to engage with services may come from.We redesigned our first-year ‘Individual Differences in Mental Health and Wellbeing’ using a psychology-literate framework, which has been defined as “students’ capacity to intentionally and adaptively use their psychology knowledge and skills to achieve personal, professional, and societal goals” (Pownall & Harris, 2025). The assessment for this unit is the first piece of summative coursework our psychology students complete at university. It was designed to be authentic, encouraging students to engage with real-world contexts while also offering a degree of choice. This optionality allows students to explore affirmative and appropriate support for service users who are often overlooked, including minoritised groups they may personally identify with. Students were therefore asked:

• To create an infographic leaflet on a mental health condition for an audience of their choosing
• To reflect on their choices of information communication, including their assumptions and biases

The students’ audience choice was based on two characteristics: life-stage (i.e., young people, middle-aged or older age) and one other demographic (i.e., ethnicity/cultural group, gender, sexuality). We wanted students to engage with the material on a different level to really support their reflective process on creating their infographic, especially if they chose to create an infographic leaflet for a previously or currently underrepresented or underserved group. To support this first summative assessment, we provided scaffolding through workshops, resources, and practical activities.

We first became aware of the Museum of Medicine and Health in Stopford Building at the 2024 ITL Teaching and Learning conference. Stephanie Seville, Museum Heritage Officer, gave a lightning talk about how the museum collections had been used previously to engage students and support learning. This inspired us to start thinking about how museum items might be used to support teaching on the BSc Psychology programme and we contacted Stephanie after the conference to enquire about a possible collaboration.

The museum’s collection predominantly comprises of physical health related items, but Stephanie shared with us two items in the collection related to mental health: A leucotome, a now obsolete neurosurgery instrument, used for preforming lobotomies in the 1940s, and an early Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) head shocker. These items felt well suited to teaching the history of mental healthcare and its relevance today, while opening discussion around iatrogenic harm and its disproportionate impact on marginalised groups. The aim was to help students understand the importance of personalised care and communication, and to reinforce the relevance of the infographic assignment.

Stephanie helped us select two further items from the museum that would allow similar conversations – a ‘Sims’ speculum and a hearing aid. J. Sims developed the speculum by experimenting on enslaved black women without anaesthetic. The hearing aid, presented in what looks like a jewellery box and designed to look like a hairclip, we used to prompt important questions about how difference and disability are viewed, as well as a discussion about inclusion and exclusion. This provided us with an opportunity to talk to students about ethics and patient and public involvement in research too.

A challenge for us was the size of our first-year cohort – we had 389 students enrolled on this unit(!) which presented problems about how students would engage with the museum objects in a meaningful way. Stephanie suggested that we ask for volunteers to handle the objects and take questions from their peers to determine what the objects were. We used this idea in session and, as each of the objects had also been photographed for inclusion in the museum’s digital collection, we were able to project these during the activity to ensure all students could see the items.

We asked students to guess what each item was before revealing the answer to them. We then provided some information about the item, discussed whether it was still in use today and if so, how it had evolved. In end of unit surveys, we received positive comments from students about this session

“I enjoyed learning about the history of psychology at the beginning and the medical aspects of psychology.”

“[I] liked the initial practicals where we looked at the history of mental health e.g. historical treatments/ tools”

We were keen to develop further content around a theme of inclusion and exclusion from society in the context of mental health and through (very nice) meetings (in the Manchester Museum cafe) with Stephanie we were able to achieve this. Stephanie shared with us digitalised collections from the University Library special collections including photographs from a Victorian asylum in Yorkshire. We asked students reflective questions about these pictures such as: ‘What message or idea does the photographer want to convey?’ and ‘What are your impressions of the asylum?’. We hoped to encourage critical thinking and help students recognise that anything created by a person will be shaped by that person’s values, beliefs, understanding, experiences and agenda.

We shared with students that asylums were intended to be therapeutic environments but that going to an asylum also meant people were removed from their communities. We presented further accounts of asylum life, including a diary written by Elizabeth Hitchcock during her stay at Lancaster asylum. Having viewed and reflected on multiple sources of information we asked students to synthesise this evidence and draw their own conclusions about what asylum life was like. As with the museum objects, we then provided students with information about changes to mental healthcare, deinstitutionalisation and the move towards community mental healthcare. We shared pictures of modern mental healthcare facilities and asked students the same reflective questions about these: ‘Why were they taken?’, ‘What does the photographer want to convey?’. We also challenged possible perceptions about the relevance of iatrogenic harm in past and modern mental healthcare, sharing information about recent scandals relating to abuse of patients in inpatient facilities.

Overall, this collaboration was a great experience for us – we were so grateful for Stephanie’s support and ideas when designing the two sessions and pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it was to gain access to the museum items. To anyone thinking of collaborating with the Museum of Medicine and Health, we would strongly encourage you to go for it! For us it was a great way to bring the history of mental healthcare to life for students.

Link to Museum of Medicine and Health: Museum of Medicine and Health in Stopford Building

L to R – Rebecca White, Amber Ruigrok, Stephanie Seville

Further Reading

Ahmad, G., McManus, S., Cooper, C., Hatch, S.L., & Das-Munshi, J. (2022). Prevalence of common mental disorders and treatment receipt for people from ethnic minority backgrounds in England: repeated cross-sectional surveys of the general population in 2007 and 2014. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 221(3):520-527. doi:10.1192/bjp.2021.179

Liubertiene, G., Sloman, A., Morris, S., Bhavsar, V., Clark, C., Das-Munshi, J., Jenkins, R., McManus, S., Oram, S., & Wessely, S. (2025). Common mental health conditions. In Morris, S., Hill, S., Brugha, T., & McManus, S. (Eds.), Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey: Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, England, 2023/4. NHS England. https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/adult-psychiatric-morbidity-survey/survey-of-mental-health-and-wellbeing-england-2023-24/common-mental-health-conditions#1-6-citation

Lowther-Payne, H. J., Ushakova, A., Beckwith, A., Liberty, C., Edge, R., & Lobban, F. (2023). Understanding inequalities in access to adult mental health services in the UK: a systematic mapping review. BMC Health Services Research, 23, Article 1042. doi: 10.1186/s12913-023-10030-8

Mendoza, N. S., Moreno, F. A., Hishaw, G. A., Gaw, A. C., Fortuna, L. R., Skubel, A., Porche, M. V., Roessel, M. H., Shore, J., & Gallegos, A. (2020). Affirmative care across cultures: Broadening Application, Focus, 18(1), pp. 31-39. doi: 10.1176/appi.focus.20190030

Pownall, M., & Harris, R. (2026). The prevalence of “psychological literacy” in U.K. higher education psychology teaching and learning: A national survey registered report. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 12(1), 137–153. doi: 10.1037/stl0000438

Roedema, T., Rerimassie, V., Broerse, J. E. W. & Kupper, J. F. H. (2022). Towards the reflective science communication practitioner, Journal of Science Communication, 21(04), Article A02. doi: 10.22323/2.21040202

The British Psychological Society. (2024). Standards for the Accreditation of Undergraduate, Conversion and Integrated Master’s Programmes in Psychology. https://cms.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-11/Standards%20for%20the%20accreditation%20of%20undergraduate%2C%20conversion%20and%20integrated%20MSc.pdf

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