Sorin Baiasu, Professor of Philosophy, explores what role philosophy can play in helping to tackle the worsening global mental health crisis.
Written by Sorin Baiasu (Liverpool University) and Luke Jordan (NHS Compass Manchester).
Sorin Baiasu (Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Liverpool-Oxford-St Andrews Kantian – LOSAK – Research Centre at the University of Liverpool) and Luke Jordan (Clinical Lead at the NHS Compass Manchester – Later Life CERN Pathway – and MBT, SCM and RO-DBT Practitioner) have introduced their new interdisciplinary project on philosophy and mental well-being with two posts on the reputable blog Imperfect Cognitions. Sorin and Luke offer below for our blog an extended presentation of this interdisciplinary project hosted by the LOSAK Research Centre.
Our mental health crisis
Globally, we are going through a mental health crisis. The WHO noted in 2025 that over 1 billion people are living with mental health disorders, with conditions like anxiety and depression creating immense human and economic problems. These two issues, for instance, reports the WHO, are strongly associated with long-term disability and contribute to loss of healthy life. In the UK, the National Audit Office confirmed that, in 2021/22, the NHS spent 12 billion pounds on mental health, which represented 8% of the entire NHS budget (an amount comparable to what the NHS allocated in the same period to the treatment of cancer and cancer-related illnesses). The total spend on mental health by the NHS in 2025/26 increased to almost £14 billion.
At the same time, we are experiencing a psychiatrisation of society and a medicalisation of mental disorders. Both of these tendencies bring about their own risks: overmedicalisation and overtreatment (including of shyness and social anxiety), undermining mental health provision for the most severely ill, and shifting the attention from the political aspects of the mental health crisis to individual coping. Other related issues standardly discussed in the literature are stigmatisation and reliance on medication to fix psycho-social, existential and philosophical issues, including issues linked with the use of social media and artificial intelligence.
A philosophical response?
In response to this predicament, authors sometimes point to philosophy as an alternative, non-medicalised approach, which is distinct from traditional psychotherapeutic methods and may replace or complement them. Moreover, in the context of the emergence, in the 20th century, of philosophical counselling or practice, which sometimes presents itself as an alternative or a supplement to psychotherapy, philosophy can be seen as a potential positive influence on societal well-being.
In this context, we think we could do worse than examine the resources philosophy can make available for addressing the various problems of our mental health crisis. The focus of our current interdisciplinary research is not directly on philosophy as an alternative for, or complement to, traditional psychotherapy; nor are we concerned with the related questions of philosophical counselling’s potential to ‘revitalise’ philosophy and possibly even change this discipline’s self-understanding.
Instead, by drawing on our previous experience and research (particularly an analogy with mediation in critical ethics), we focus on philosophical counselling as an important mediator between traditional psychotherapy and academic philosophy. In this way, however, we contribute indirectly also to the current efforts to tap into philosophy’s resources for addressing some of the aspects of our mental health crisis.
Supporting the workforce with philosophy
So far, our experience has shown that philosophical themes emerge systematically in psychotherapeutic interventions, which confirmed already existing views that mental health professionals would benefit from professional development training in philosophy.
To address this need, we began to discuss the relevance of continuing professional development (CPD) sessions on philosophical themes that tend to be raised in the treatment of later-life patients. Common philosophical issues include concerns about death, the meaning of life, justice, desert, virtue or the value of ignorance. We recognised that each of these topics could form the basis of a CPD session and formulated the hypothesis that CPD sessions focusing on philosophical topics, led by a researcher with formal training in philosophy may meet distinct training needs of the mental health workforce.
Potential challenges
One challenge this type of session may face becomes clear, however, if we consider the difference between philosophical counselling and psychotherapy, on the one hand, and, on the other, traditional academic philosophy. On one good account of this difference, traditional academic philosophy is a self-reflective discipline, usually classed among the ‘humanities’. These disciplines are supposed to be ‘timeless’, to appeal to all mature people throughout their adult life, rather than be prompted by any particular situation or life-problem. By contrast, although philosophical counselling uses the same tools as traditional academic philosophy, unlike philosophy, it focuses on helping individuals to deal with specific life-problems. Similarly, mental health practitioners who encounter philosophical problems in their interventions, encounter them as problems of specific individuals, in particular and concrete contexts.
As a result, providing training to mental health practitioners through academic philosophy may lead to a common problem: misaligned and irrelevant content. This becomes even more obvious, if we consider that teaching in academic contexts is usually oriented towards a set of objectives organised around the assessments the student will have to complete, in order to finish a module and a course; by contrast, the aims of a CPD session are structured by the more practical needs of the practitioners who participate to the session.
Training content should be aligned to the needs of the audience. To achieve this, we have relied on the potentially mediating role of philosophical counselling in the interaction between the researcher in philosophy delivering the session and the mental health practitioners who receive the training. In particular, we have set as a requirement for the delivery of the session that the researcher leading the session study certain relevant texts from the philosophical counselling literature, texts which include also case studies. CPD sessions are designed to start with an introduction of philosophical topics in the way in which they are taught through lectures and seminars in schools and universities; however, the case studies in the relevant philosophical counselling literature discussed in the second step will contextualise such topics by reference to specific individuals and their life-problems.
Philosophy in healthcare
In February 2026, we designed and delivered a CPD session to nurses, psychologists and social workers in the NHS. We first identified a number of philosophical topics that tend to be raised by patients during mental health interventions. Our aim was to deliver a relevant, informative and supportive CPD session, which would provide training to mental health practitioners with little or no formal training in Philosophy. Previous attempts to deliver CPD events about philosophy, of which we were aware, have suggested that such sessions often remain ‘one-off’: although practitioners feel they have learned from them, they do not often see a direct connection and relevance with their work, and do not feel such training addresses their professional needs.
Our working assumption was that CPD sessions focused on philosophical topics contextualised through case studies from the philosophical counselling literature would be regarded by mental health practitioners as supportive of their practice and forming a significant part of their continuing professional development.
The session was designed to focus on the topics of fear of death and conceptual analysis, and it involved teaching and discussion of these themes; however, it extended also to other questions with which elderly clients needed support, such as the meaning of life, justice and desert. We also thought about the nature of knowledge, and whether we should support individuals with mental health issues at all to have greater insight into the nature of the problems they have with the world. To deliver the session, we relied on some approaches and case studies from the literature on philosophical counselling.
A philosophically informed workforce?
The session fully met our expectations and confirmed the hypothesis concerning the relevance, acceptability and supportive character of the session. Members in the audience said they felt more comfortable approaching topics such as death and the meaning of life with their clients, citing newfound understanding and skill in supporting clients to be curious about how they may develop their own philosophical ideas. Staff felt less pressured to ‘find an answer’ to the philosophical issues that their clients experience, but more able to work alongside them as a guide.
The attendees felt it important that philosophical issues were not dismissed in clinical interactions, as may be typical in medical settings, instead emphasising the need to take philosophical problems seriously and welcoming collaborative discussion about those topics with clients. A further presentation of the event was made to the wider psychological workforce by two NHS members of staff who had attended our CPD event. In that presentation, they expressed the need for further training in philosophy.
Following the impact of the pilot session, we entered into discussion with members of Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust, and Pennine Care Mental Health Trust. Leaders in these settings have expressed interest in further CPD sessions. We plan to provide 6 sessions delivered by individuals trained in Philosophy, who hold a relevant post-graduate degree in the subject. Each member of the training team will have a specialist interest in a particular topic, which they will teach to trainees, and will supplement preparation with the study of case studies from texts in the philosophical counselling literature that we will recommend. Trainees will include nurses, social workers, and psychologists from the National Health Service in England. We will aim to recruit 25-30 participants, who will take part in these 6 CPD sessions.
Impact
Of relevance here is also the scope of CPD sessions for mental health professionals: they are not conceived of as prescriptive, top-down directive sessions, which serve to provide detailed step-by-step instructions in how to deal with particular issues. Rather, they provide space for groups of professionals to reflect on particular topics with the guidance of an expert in that topic, who is willing to learn about and reflect on specific case studies from the philosophical counselling literature.
CPD in mental health care has been said to include aims such as building effectiveness, encouraging novel ways of thinking, learning from disciplines from beyond medicine, forming global perspectives, and supporting the well-being of staff. Our 6 planned CPD sessions will be led by experts, who have a range of experience and knowledge of philosophy, which will support mental health professions to meet their CPD requirements by encouraging novel perspectives, and learning from disciplines outside of medicine.
The pilot CPD session showed that philosophy can be relevant within the NHS. Our innovative use of case studies in philosophical counselling to intermediate between traditional academic philosophy and psychotherapy will structure the next 6 CPD sessions. The sessions are devised to further explore how philosophy can be used with individuals who access the NHS for support with their mental health and well-being-related issues. Upon further positive confirmation of this methodology, we will use co-design principles to inform the development of the use of philosophy in the NHS.