Join us for this transformative conference on Palliative Care for Mental Health patients.
This insightful and engaging conference is dedicated to exploring the intersections of mind, body, and soul in the palliative care of individuals living with mental illness or learning disabilities. The event brings together leading experts to share knowledge, lived experience, and best practices for supporting the spiritual, emotional, and practical needs of these patients.
Through a series of lectures, interactive workshops, and reflective case-based discussions, participants will gain valuable tools and perspectives to enhance compassionate, person-centered care.
This conference aims to provide a comprehensive overview of innovative and effective practices in palliative care for people with mental health conditions by:
We welcome professionals from across mental health, palliative care, social care, and allied disciplines to join this important conversation.
By attending the conference, you will:
The Palliative Care Section: George Adams Prize and Annual abstract prize will also be presented and awarded at the conference.
Professor John Swinton
Professor Gareth Owen
Jane Bernal
Joshua Aduba
Katherine Nutt
Aaron Bath
Professor Sarah Yardley and Sarah Draper
Join us for an interactive workshop exploring how we can create systematic, inclusive, and relational approaches to meet the palliative care needs of people living with severe mental illness. Through case discussions, provocations, and real-world examples including insights from Sarah Yardley’s recent international Churchill Fellowship we will examine structural vulnerabilities and the lived realities of care. We invite you to join us in an honest conversation consider if, when and how health and social care professionals should use advocacy, activism, and relationship-based approaches “upstream” to create meaningful improvements.
Dr Laura Korb and Dr Julie Carter
The role of palliative care for people with learning disabilities is often overlooked. In this session we aim to highlight the challenges faced by people with learning disabilities in accessing high quality end of life care, and consider how we can best provide compassionate, individualised palliative care to all those in need.
Hannah Cadogan and Amanda McKenzie
Using the attachment and containment theories we will look at how our early years and growing up permeate our relationship with ourselves and others in the here and now.
Hopefully this workshop will generate lively discussion on how these theories are relevant to palliative care.
Mandy Bruce
Through reflections, case studies and experiential vignettes, this session will offer an art psychotherapy perspective on using image and imagination to tend to those with mental illness in palliative care.
Dr Natasha Bradley, Dr Phillipa Greenfield and Dr Ada Hui
Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole St, Marylebone, London, W1G 0AE, United Kingdom
Registration for this event will close at 1:00am on Tuesday 18 November 2025. Late registrations will not be accepted.
The agenda is subject to change at any time
If the event is recorded, we are only able to share presentations that we have received permission to share. There is no guarantee that all sessions will be available after the event, this is at the presenter’s and RSM’s discretion.
All views expressed at this event are of the speakers themselves and not of the Royal Society of Medicine, nor the speaker's organisations.
This event will be recorded and stored by the Royal Society of Medicine and may be distributed in future on various internet channels.
