My name is Harriet Fletcher and I am an NHS consultant psychiatrist specialising in psychotherapy.

My main model of therapy is cognitive analytic therapy, and I have previously trained in both psychodynamic psychotherapy and in DBT. In my current role I work in an outpatient psychotherapy service training psychiatrists in psychotherapy.  In the service we work with many people who have received a label of personality disorder, and teaching resident doctors to think differently about this work is very important to me.  I also deliver teaching sessions to medical students and GPs focussing on critical perspectives on the label, wherever possible co-delivering teaching with people with lived/living experience.

I feel strongly about the discrimination, poor care and exclusion that so many people with this label continue to experience and this has been my motivation for wanting to become more involved with the work of BIGSPD. I have also been involved with other work aiming to improve people’s experience of care, for example the 2022 update to the NICE guidance around self harm.

More recently I have become very interested in the role that neurodivergence plays in the difficulties that are understood as personality disorder, and I have sought out further training and clinical experience in this area. I am also keen to raise awareness of the wide ranging physical health problems linked to symptomatic joint hypermobility syndromes. These are often overlooked or not understood by clinicians, but are very prevalent in neurodivergent people, and by extension in people receiving a personality disorder label.