Consultant Clinical Psychologist | Psychotherapist | Senior Lecturer | Writer
Hi, I'm Jay.
I'm an award-winning consultant clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and campaigner with 25 years’ experience championing trauma-informed and neuroaffirmative care across the NHS and beyond.
My greatest joy — and the centre of my work — is providing psychotherapy. I also show up in other ways as part of a long-standing commitment to improving mental health in and beyond the clinic: pioneering award-winning team approaches, activism, and research into how ideas of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ victims are constructed across psychiatry, the welfare state, and survivors’ inner worlds. This work has shaped national policy and training and has reached the Houses of Parliament.
I began in the 1990s as one of Europe’s first peer workers. Relational ethics — compassion, approachability and power-sharing — aren’t add-ons; they’re the foundation of everything I do.
Please feel free to have a look around, or get straight in touch — whatever suits you.
My Practice
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Depth work that holds both immediate survival and long-term transformation — healing suffering whilst creating space to restore vitality, play and curiosity.
ACTIVISM & SCHOLARSHIP
Challenging how neoliberal welfare and psychiatric systems shape who gets care: exposing DWP violence, dismantling 'borderline personality disorder' as a catch-all.
SUPERVISION & TRAINING
Training clinicians in embodied, trauma-informed care that prevents iatrogenic harm and changes how we understand dissociation, divergence, and extreme states.
MEDIA & WRITING
TV, radio, podcast, and media commentary on mental health systems, welfare policy, and the politics of deservingness translating structural critique into stories.
Proud to have worked with:
CONTACT ME
Whether you are interested in psychotherapy, media collaboration, activism, or training & supervision, please feel free to get in touch with me.
SOCIALS
@Shrink_at_Large
ADDRESS
Dr Jay Watts
Gosfield Street,
London, W1H
(by appointment)