Revd Dr Alison Gray "Resilience, faith and health"

Описание: This seminar took place on Thursday 19 May 2016, 4.30-6pm in Wallis Room (St John’s College, 3 South Bailey, Durham)


ABSTRACT:
“Resilience” originates, with “stress”, in the field of materials science. Resilience refers to the ability of a substance to spring back into shape when a load is removed, and by analogy to the ability of a person to tolerate stress. I will consider how resilience relates to stress, grit and burnout. Many individual resilience factors have been identified, including religion and spirituality but these have not been investigated in detail. Organised religion and spiritual practices are cited by many people as sources of strength, enabling them to cope with challenges. I will present my ongoing research project, which looks at the sources of resilience for medical students at Birmingham University. We are using a variety of structured questionnaires and interviews to look more deeply into the relationships between resilience, faith and health. Resilience is a useful concept, but it can be used negatively to blame staff for not coping when the real issues are inappropriate staffing levels or intolerable workplace conditions.

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BIOGRAPHY:
Dr Alison Gray is a consultant psychiatrist, leading the Mental Health Liaison team in the Hereford County Hospital. She has a long interest in religion, spirituality and health and is an ordained Anglican church minister. Having started out as a natural scientist at Cambridge University, Alison transferred into medicine and then trained in psychiatry in the West Midlands. She worked for several years in the National Deaf Mental Health Service in Birmingham, leaving there in 2006 to train for ordination at Queens Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education. After being ordained in the Church of England she returned to psychiatry in 2010. Having worked with the RAID team in Birmingham she set up and continues to run the Mental Health Liaison team in Hereford, and works academically at the Cadbury centre, Birmingham University.