Paul Abbott

Screenwriter Paul Abbott has been writing drama for Radio and TV since 1982. He has won awards from the Royal Television Society, The Indies and the Broadcasting Press Guild. Additionally, the BAFTAs awarded Paul the Dennis Potter Award for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Television. He is best known for State of Play, Clocking Off and Shameless. Paul has spoken out about his own experience of mental distress in the media.

Sian was also awarded the Survivor Award in 2003 for her open and lucid account of her experiences featured in the Sky News report on the Department of Health's 'Read the Signs' campaign, which aimed to raise awareness of mental health problems among young people.

BAFTA winning writer Donna Franceschild won the Mental Health Media Award in 1995 for her drama serial Takin' Over the Asylum and again in 2001 for Donovan Quick. Her most recent drama was The Key which was broadcast on BBC 2 in September 2003.

Born in NYC, he is now a dual national. He has directed plays, tv drama, and opera. His more than one hundred and twenty films as director or producer cover arts, current affairs, social issues, and comedies, including THE SECRET POLICEMAN’S BALL (with John Cleese), and the first COMIC RELIEF (with Richard Curtis). Roger was the first documentary filmmaker to be honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship last year, the Academy’s lifetime achievement award. His company, Films of Record, is celebrated its 25th year in 2004. Roger was awarded an OBE in 2006 for his services to broadcasting.

Catherine Jackson is editor of the magazine Mental Health Today, which is now in its fourth year. She was for many years a cartoonist but has for the past 15 years worked in magazine journalism, specialising in mental health and community care. She has also been a user of mental health services.

Alkarim Jivani was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and educated in Tanzania, Kenya, and the United Kingdom, He graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in philosophy and literature. He is the author of It's Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century which dealt with gay and lesbian fashion and slang. Until recently Alkarim was TV editor of Time Out magazine and is currently working on a couple of book projects and a radio documentary.

Antonia Jolly is an accomplished Radio Producer, whom has worked across a number of award winning radio programmes at BBC Radio 1, including: Jo Whiley and the critically acclaimed phone-in show, The Surgery. Through her work on The Surgery, she developed a real passion for lifestyle issues that can impact of young people’s well being and stepped into the role of Campaigns Producer. Antonia produced, the biggest campaign in the history of Radio 1 with the Beat Bullying Campaign.

This year, Antonia won a Sony Award for a Safer Sex Campaign, which she produced alongside MTV and Durex. She recently left the BBC to pursue other radio and social action opportunities and is currently producing lifestyle podcasts for Channel 4 Radio; and works as a Campaigns Manager for one of the country’s leading charities, The Children’s Society.

Shelley Jofre is a reporter with the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Panorama. She has made several programmes on the treatment of mental health, including investigations into the increasing use of psychiatric drugs with children and the overprescription of benzodiazepine tranquillisers. Her three investigations into the controversy surrounding the antidepressant Seroxat have prompted a government review and changes in the way the drug is now prescribed. In 2003 two of the films were awarded an MHM Special Commendation for Public Impact. Shelley is based in Glasgow and has worked as a BBC journalist for 15 years.

David Lloyd is Visiting Professor in television journalism at City University; until 2002 he was Head of Newsand Current Affairs at Channel 4,where he was responsible for the development of Channel 4 News and invented strands such as Dispatches and Unreported World. He began his career as a General Trainee at the BBC, where he worked in Overseas Services radio and in television music programmes.

As well as journalism, Tim Lott has worked in publishing and broadcasting, and was editor of the London listings magazine City Limits. He won the Whitbread First Novel Award for White City Blue, his first work of fiction. His novel The Scent of Dried Roses, a moving account of his mother's depression and eventual suicide, addresses the stigma attached to mental illness and won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for autobiography. He is a writer with a marked sense of humanity and love, who is painfully aware of how easily the threads of one's life can unpick themselves.

Liz Main is a journalist, producer and media consultant who bases her work on her own experience of mental distress and knowledge of the mental health system. She is a columnist for Mental Health Today and for Ouch!, the BBC disability website, is an ambassador for Mindout for Mental Health, and is an associate member of the Broadcast & Creative Industries Disability Network.