Eleanor Davey – Research Assistant

Eleanor Davey is a Research Assistant with the Psychosis Research Unit (PRU) at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH), supporting the Feeling Safer project – a multi-centre randomized controlled trial evaluating a six-month, staff-supported online program for people experiencing persistent fears that others intend to harm them (persecutory delusions). In her role, Eleanor supports participant recruitment and conducts research assessments with trial participants.

The published Feeling Safer protocol describes a single-blind trial design with research assessments at baseline, 3, 6, and 9 months carried out by research assistants blind to group allocation. It also evaluates Feeling Safer when supported by different therapists, which are peer-support workers, graduate mental health workers, and CBT therapists. Feeling Safer is a six-month online program and includes content areas such as self-confidence, sleep, worry, voices, memories, finding safety, and activities.

Eleanor completed an MSc in Clinical and Health Psychology at The University of Manchester, graduating with merit and receiving a distinction for her dissertation. Her dissertation used qualitative methods to examine factors influencing help-seeking for eating disorders in older adults. She also began a Research Assistant position at the University of Manchester while undertaking her MSc, which involved classifying serious incident data to produce an outcome variable for the clinical trial TULIPS within GMMH.

Earlier in her training, as part of her undergraduate degree, Eleanor undertook a placement year at St Andrew’s Healthcare in Birmingham. She worked across different client groups and gained experience in an inpatient forensic mental health setting, developing her knowledge and skills within clinical and forensic psychology.

Thinking about her future career, Eleanor is an aspiring clinical psychologist, and is hoping to undertake the doctoral training programme in clinical psychology in the next few years. In her spare time, Eleanor enjoys going running, travelling, seeing friends and finding good food spots