Hannah Barraclough

A Doctorate-level Clinical Psychologist with 15 years' experience spanning the NHS and private practice, I help audiences rethink mental health, cutting through jargon to talk about it the way people actually do.

Over the past five years I've built something the North East didn't have: a clinical private practice, a not-for-profit supporting business owner wellbeing, and a purpose-built wellbeing space, all under one roof. I work with adults and organisations, which means I bring both clinical depth and real-world, commercial insight to conversations about mental health, leadership, burnout, and what genuine wellbeing support looks like in practice.

I'm a passionate speaker, and a good fit for podcasts and panels covering mental health, entrepreneurship, workplace wellbeing, or the business of building something new.

I trained and worked across NHS primary and secondary mental health services for over a decade before moving into private practice, and that background shapes everything about how I work. I've sat with people at the sharpest end of mental health - complex trauma, severe anxiety, neurodivergence that's gone unrecognised for years, physical health conditions that have dismantled someone's sense of who they are, and I've done that long enough to know that good clinical care isn't about having a tidy model to apply. It's about being rigorous and human at the same time.

My therapeutic toolkit is broad: EMDR, IFS, ACT, CFT, and an integrative approach that means I'm not looking for a single strategy to fit every person. My particular clinical interests are anxiety, relational difficulties, complex trauma, and neurodivergence — including ADHD assessment and diagnosis. I also hold specific training in physical health psychology and sleep, both of which are consistently under-represented in mental health conversations and routinely dismissed as secondary concerns when they're often anything but.

Alongside clinical work, I've built two organisations from scratch. Clear Mind Collective CIC exists because business owners and entrepreneurs consistently fall through the gap between a GP and an Employee Assistance Programme; They're high-functioning, they're keeping things running, and they're often the last people anyone thinks to ask if they're struggling. Durham Wellness Space is a fully restored historic building in Coxhoe housing five treatment rooms for vetted practitioners across disciplines. Built because the North East has enough generic wellbeing on offer, and not enough that's clinically grounded and community-rooted.

I've consulted with organisations on workplace mental health for several years, and I approach that work the same way I approach clinical practice: without jargon, without a generic off-the-shelf programme, and with the specificity that comes from actually knowing the workforce and culture you're working with. I've worked on everything from neurodiversity and reasonable adjustments to generational workforce dynamics, leadership communication, and the gap between what an Employee Assistance Programme provides and what complex mental health presentations actually need.

I'm not precious about where the conversation happens. I'm as useful in a factory as I am in a therapy room, and I don't think those environments require a different version of me.

Topic suggestions:

- Mental health in the trades: what 15 years of clinical practice taught me about the people we don't talk about in wellness conversations.

- Complex trauma doesn't look like you think it does. Why high-functioning, apparently capable people are often the most missed.

- Sleep, physical health, and mental health: why treating them separately is a clinical failure. What I've seen in practice when the whole picture is actually looked at.

- What building a wellbeing ecosystem actually taught me: how running a private practice, a CIC, and a physical wellbeing space simultaneously changed what I know about mental health provision and what's still missing.

- The difference between a wellbeing initiative and wellbeing culture, and why only one of them works.

- What "not one size fits all" actually means in clinical practice. How an integrative approach differs from picking techniques off a shelf.

- Generational divides at work aren't an HR inconvenience — they're a wellbeing concern. Inside the therapy room, where a 1990s loyalty model is colliding with a Gen Z workforce.

- Why do I know what I need to do and still can't do it? The gap between insight and action is where most therapeutic work actually happens, and why self-help will never bridge it.

- Therapy should meet people where they are, not where a protocol says to put them. Why I left the NHS cold clinical room behind and what actually happened when I did.

- Women finding their voice and taking up space: why it takes so long, why that's not a personal failing, and what changes when it finally happens.