Background

I am a clinical psychologist, trainer, researcher, and author. I was born in Edinburgh, worked in London for many years, and now live back in Edinburgh. For 13 years I provided psychological therapies in the NHS, and in 2012, I co-founded a organisation called Balanced Minds, which specialises in providing Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and self-help resources for the public, and CFT training and consultation for professionals and organisations.

As a superviser and trainer, I still do regular work for the NHS, as well as other organisations across multiple sectors (e.g. healthcare, social care, education, charities). As a researcher, I have been mainly investigating CFT for supporting people with distressing experiences linked to trauma and psychosis. I have authored a number of academic papers and book chapters on this subject, have given numerous invited talks, and have run compassion training workshops for thousands of mental health workers in different countries around the world.

Appointments

• Director (Balanced Minds)
• Adjunct Lecturer (Stanford University)
• Research Fellow (University of Glasgow)
• MRC Clinical Research Training Fellow (King’s College London)
• Clinical Psychologist (NHS)

Qualifications

• PhD (King’s College London)
• DClinPsy (University of Oxford)
• MA (Heythrop College, University of London)
• BSc (University College London)

Websites

• Business: www.balancedminds.com
• Book: www.relatingtovoices.com
• Personal: www.charlieheriotmaitland.com
• Research: www.orcid.org/0000-0002-4770-6532

Motivations

I am passionate about empowering people to understand and take care of their mental wellbeing. As a researcher, my work is dedicated to exploring ways to enhance mental health and to deepen our understanding of this (tricky) human brain of ours. I particularly want my work to make a positive contribution and impact in addressing:

• Mental health – Understanding our brains, emotions, and internal processes can help us to get better at working with them, rather than against them
• Stigma – Understanding that all brains are naturally tricky can reduce stigma for those really struggling with mental health. “There is no ‘them and us’, there’s Only Us“¹
• World problems – Understanding ourselves and how our brains work not only boosts self-awareness but can also reveal why some broader world issues exist and help us find ways to solve them.

1. Mirabai Swingler, Founder of the Only Us Campaign ↩︎

Academic interests

Psychosis is my main area of academic interest / expertise. However, I have always viewed psychosis on a continuum throughout the whole population. For example, my MA thesis (2006) was titled ‘Mysticism and madness: Different aspects of the same human experience?’, my DClinPsy thesis (2010) was titled ‘Exploring a radical normalisation approach to psychosis’, and my PhD thesis (2019) was titled ‘Social influences on dissociative processes in psychosis’.

So my personal passion has always been about bridging the gap between clinical conditions and everyday mental health experiences throughout the general population. To extend the impact of my work into people’s daily lives, I have written two books – the first (2022) is a compassionate guide for voice-hearers, aimed at reducing feelings of stigma and pathologisation, and the second (coming out in Jan 2026) explores how a whole range of distressing and self-destructive experiences can show up in our everyday lives.