A Vision for Compassionate Change by Madelaine Watkins RNMH

Arriving at the beautiful green space of Coed Hills felt a little different to me this time. I had been a participant at a Compassionate Mental Health learning retreat in 2024, and this time, in 2026, I was invited to be one of the wellbeing team. I felt honoured and privileged to be entrusted with such a precious aspect of the event.

In both 2024 and 2026 I found the experience deeply moving and inspiring. Being with people from all walks of life, from all over the world, from all backgrounds, breaking bread and sharing stories together. I felt this was connecting me to something I had struggled to put into words for a long time. That’s what this place does – helps the words formulate around a feeling, a knowing that can be so difficult to articulate otherwise. The sense that deep and authentic human connection is brave and profoundly healing and recognising that traditional mental health services just aren’t built for that.

One of the many moments that stood out for me this year was catching up with a young woman who I had met the first time I came. She had been having an incredibly difficult time back then, I remember she was hugely courageous in sharing her story to a room full of strangers on that first morning. Meeting her again I wondered what impact that experience had had on her, what had it left her with. Whether her choice of vulnerability, standing there sharing her pain, had helped her in some way. She told me that it had been the beginning of a long healing process, but now, just a couple of years later, she was in a very different place. Feeling whole and wanting to be alive. Vibrant and kind. It filled my heart with hope and brought me back again to what I know, that healing is relational, connecting to each other, to the land, to something deeper brings real lasting change.

The worst aspects of mental health services that I have seen, as a mental health nurse and as a family member, have been coercive, restrictive and reductive – shutting people away, disconnecting them from their people, shrinking people to fit narrow diagnostic labels without their consent, ignoring people’s gifts and strengths and limiting people’s choices to only medication. All the opposite of what you find at a Compassionate Mental Health retreat.

The best aspects of mental health care that I have witnessed in the NHS over the years have been rooted in choice, compassion, empowerment, authenticity. In relational approaches, the human-to-human experience, the shared knowledge that we all suffer, that anyone can find themselves in an altered state of consciousness given the right (or wrong) circumstances and we all have the innate ability to heal and grow from this. The approaches that work best are the ones that create space, openness, curiosity and choice allowing people to make sense of their experiences (whether that be a bio-medical narrative or something else).

I have been filled with optimism when I have witnessed mental health staff remain compassionately connected to people, even when the distress and suffering is intense, like a tsunami that could engulf them both. Being alongside someone who can remain anchored and grounded while in this sacred, potentially transformational space is crucial, so we don’t feel adrift and alone.

This is why the work of Compassionate Mental Health is so important. It is a vision for the change that is possible, and a safe container for all those already striving to work in this way, or yearning to be understood in this way. And through this experience I have met incredible people doing powerful work across the world to create spaces that allow this relational approach to flourish. The compassionate therapeutic ecosystem is growing globally. Coming to just one of these events linked me with so many people who are bringing these spaces into reality. It’s not just theoretical and you can see the places and hear about projects where it works.

Attending the first Compassionate Mental Health event back in 2024, inspired me to create an intergenerational VV gathering for voice hearers and vision seers in Cardiff and Vale. It enabled me to build networks with the Soteria project and am currently exploring whether it’s possible to bring a Soteria pilot to Cardiff. It led me to explore the possibility of therapeutic community wards, and I will be asking for Cardiff and Vale to consider this an option to reduce readmission rates.

It has fuelled my inner fire to keep pushing forward with these approaches as I currently work within traditional MH services, I’m striving to change the systems so these approaches can flourish. But even more than that, I’ve built a bond with the land at Coed Hills, met the most awe-inspiring people and I’ve made many new friends. Even though sadly the retreat had come to an end and it was time to say goodbye, I knew these were people I would see again.

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Madelaine Watkins is Clinical Nurse Specialist for Psychosis in Older Adults at Cardiff and Vale UHB, and she also runs intergenerational hearing voices groups for adults of all ages who hear voices and see visions.

In 2024 Madaleine was RCN Wales Nurse of the Year.

Join Madelaine at the next Coed Hills learning retreat: Call to Adventure: September 28 – October 01 2026 

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