Mood Clinic celebrates first birthday

Mersey Care's specialist mood clinic, designed for patients who have difficult to treat mood disorders across Cheshire and Merseyside, has marked its first birthday by hosting a guided tour for service users and carers who supported its development.

The Mersey Care Mood Clinic, which is based at Knowsley Resource and Recovery Centre in Whiston, has received over 180 referrals since being launched in spring 2025. It helps people across Cheshire and Merseyside who have experienced problems with their mood, but have struggled with the usual treatments from their GP or community mental health team.

It was established as part of the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) mood disorder care innovations research, which focuses on new ways of understanding and treating mood disorders,  and Dr Fabian Devlin, Mood Clinic Speciality Doctor, and Professor Dan Joyce, M-RIC Co-Director, led the tour and a video of it can be seen below.

Dr Devlin said: “We're incredibly proud of the work we've done in the past year to set up and develop the clinic to help support individuals experiencing difficult-to-treat depression. The tour was a great opportunity to walk them around the clinic, show them all the ways in which it has developed and hear their thoughts on how we are doing.” 

The clinic was developed with close involvement from M-RIC service user and carer representatives and public advisors, who shared their lived experience perspectives to help shape the way in which the clinic interacts with patients. One example of their support was in co-producing the pre-assessment process and data collection forms, which gives patients a chance to tell their story before meeting with clinic staff. 

Matt Copple, an M-RIC Service User and Carer Representative (SUCR), said: "Based on my own experience of the kinds of treatments recommended by the Mood Clinic and also as an M-RIC SUCR involved in co-designing the future of these services, I’ve seen it both from the perspective of someone receiving treatment and someone trying to influence change.   

“So, it’s fantastic to tour the clinic now and see the ways in which it has grown in leaps and bounds. It’s really going places and having it in the community is great because it means that people don’t fall down the cracks.”