NICOLA LESTER Lecturer in Mental Health at Leeds Beckett University

 

Nicola graduated from Edinburgh University in 2005 after qualifying as a Mental Health Nurse. Since qualifying she has worked in a range of different clinical settings across the NHS, prison services, the Armed Forces and in the charitable sector. Nicola is a qualified EMDR therapist and specialises in working with conflict-related trauma and traumatic bereavement. In the past she has worked overseas in South Africa developing a mental health education project for teachers working with children experiencing trauma and as a specialist nurse with asylum seeking children and adolescents arriving in the UK.

 

She is a senior lecturer in Mental Health at Leeds Beckett University and is a part time PhD student at York University in the Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development Unit where her research focuses on military bereavement following a death in conflict. In addition, Nicola is a guest lecturer at several universities providing teaching on her area of specialism; traumatic bereavement and the co-ordination of the psychological response to mass fatalities.

 

"Soldiers in Mind"

 

The “Soldiers in Mind” service was launched in February 2012, funded by the Lt Dougie Dalzell MC Memorial Trust.

 

"Over a two-year period, we provided support to 27 families, across the UK and internationally in Australia, Nepal, Fiji and New Zealand. During this time, I was privileged to join families on their journey from the point of death notification to the closure of the Coroner’s Inquest and the time beyond. I witnessed first hand their anguish and distress, their struggle to make meaning from their loss and their relentless pursuit to create lasting memorials to their loved ones.

 

I learnt that every family was unique and different and would embark on a variation of this journey. I learnt that sometimes making meaning from this loss was simply not possible; that for many there could be no meaning. But I learnt that honouring and remembering were. As a nation we have created national memorial sites across the country and overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Books have been published depicting individual’s experiences of loss and made accessible to us all. But what the general public, the politicians and the military do not know, have never seen, is that across the country in individual households, these families have created their own ways of remembering and honouring, not just a soldier who served their country, but a son or daughter, husband or wife, mother or father, who is quite simply loved and forever missed"

 

In her presentation. Nicola will share some of the stories behind these creations; of how these families chose to remember in so many different ways.