Professor Craig Jackson
Acting Head of School of Social Sciences | Birmingham City University
Birmingham, UNITED KINGDOM
Craig has provided psychology input and interviews to numerous documentaries and news items about offending, crime, and general psychology.
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Biography
As Professor of Occupational Health Psychology, Craig is interested in the effect of workplaces and working on people’s health and psychological wellbeing. Specific interests include unusual and rare occupations, work-related suicide, technology change, pesticide exposures, working hours, stress, research techniques, neurobehavioural methods and psychological assessments.
He also increasingly researches the relationship between work and crime – particularly how offenders use their occupations to facilitate offending behaviours and this has led to an increase in research using statistical techniques such as multidimensional scaling of offence behaviours. Craig has provided psychology input and interviews to numerous TV documentaries and news items about offending, crime, and general psychology. He was also the scientific consultant for two series of “killing Spree” – a major Channel 5 documentary.
Craig contributed to both of the leading UK textbooks on occupational health and a number of Health and Safety Executive reports. He has also contributed to newspapers, television and radio. He has acted as consultant to many companies and organisations including Shell, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Rolls Royce, NHS, Jacob-Fleming and Marcus Evans. He appears regularly in the media discussing the psychology behind a wide range of news stories such as stress, crime, health issues, lifestyle, and ethics.
Craig is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (University of Birmingham); Research Director of an independent health research consultancy; and a Member of the ESRC Peer Review College. He is also a former Associate editor of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (a BMJ journal); Vice-Chair of various NHS Local Research Ethics Committees, and editor in Chief of the International Journal of Rural Psychology.
Areas of Expertise (7)
Workplace Issues
Suicide
Crime and Psychology
Occupational Health
Spree Killers
Stress
Psychological Assessments
Affiliations (1)
- Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society
Selected Media Appearances (3)
Mac Miller connected a generation of young people trying to understand their mental health
iNews
2018-09-13
Craig Jackson, Professor of Psychology at Birmingham City University, told i in that the weeks following Princess Dina’s death in 1997, counselling and psychologist referrals went up 40-60%. As a result, this idea of connecting and grieving a celebrity’s death will always be compared to this iconic moment in history when everyday people mourned a figure many of them had never met before. And in contrast to Marchant, Jackson is warier about the ways we express grief now and instead calls it “grieving lite”. In tweeting or Instagram posting “RIP Mac Miller”, the way he said most of us react to these events now, he told i, much of the world partakes in a “tokenistic grief that you have to briefly show you’re not completely heartless”. If anything, he argued, public grief is becoming increasingly performative and less genuine.
Manchester Pusher: Does a serial killer haunt the city's canals?
BBC News
2018-09-05
It cited 61 deaths in the city's waterways over the past six years and quoted a psychologist, Prof Craig Jackson, saying "perhaps we are talking about a canal killer". The canals, he said, were "popular dumping sites" for bodies. Since then, the number of reported deaths has grown, to 76, then 80, then 86, in different newspapers. What is rarely mentioned is that these figures refer not to the city itself but to Greater Manchester, an urban area covering hundreds of square miles which also includes towns several miles from Manchester, such as Bolton, Rochdale and Wigan.
9 common personality traits which could mean the difference between an early death and long life
The Mirror
2018-05-28
“Recognising your own personality traits could be the first step towards taking action and limiting potential long-term health risks associated with them,” says Professor Craig Jackson, Professor of Occupational Health Psychology at Birmingham City University.
Selected Articles (3)
Work-life and well-being among UK therapeutic prison officers: A thematic analysis
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
Emma Walker, Helen Egan, Craig Andrew Jackson, Matthew Tonkin
2018 Previous research has clearly demonstrated the positive impact of therapeutic interventions on offenders’ well-being. Much less is known about the impact on prison staff facilitating and delivering such interventions. We employed qualitative methodology to capture a deeper understanding of the work of therapeutic prison officers. Seven prison officers working in a U.K. Category B therapeutic community prison were interviewed about their working lives, including their own participation in therapy. Following a thematic analysis approach, key findings indicated that the physical and cultural work environment was very important to staff; the therapeutic element of their job role, although demanding, was both satisfying and rewarding; and that working in a therapeutic prison environment provided the opportunity for personal as well as professional development. We conclude that further attention should be given to the unique nature of therapeutic prison work and the positive impact it can have on well-being at work.
A weekend/weekday comparison of adherence to daily treatment regimens in adults with cystic fibrosis
Health Psychology Report
Rebecca Keyte, Helen Egan, Craig Andrew Jackson, E Edward Nash, Anna Regan, Michail Mantzios
2018 Treatment adherence is a major concern in cystic fibrosis (CF), with accumulating evidence that health outcomes are worse in patients with lower levels of adherence. This study investigates how adherence differs for adults with CF during a weekday and a weekend day by examining the roles of sex, anxiety, depression, and lung function as predictors of adherence. participants and procedure Fifty-two adult participants with CF were recruited. De-mographics and spirometry results were recorded. Participants completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and two daily phone diaries in order to record their adherence to pancreatic enzymes, vitamins, physiotherapy and exercise. Based on previous findings, it was hypothe-sised that reported adherence would be higher during the weekend in comparison to weekdays, due to lower time pressure during the weekend. results Paired sample t-tests indicated that overall participants had higher reported adherence during the weekend in comparison to weekdays, with sex, anxiety, depression and lung function being predictors of adherence. conclusions Clinical implications and future directions are discussed, with an emphasis on the need for further qualitative research. We are now conducting another research project utilising qualitative interviews with participants to further investigate adherence within the CF population. Our aim is to identify the main adherence barriers and to develop interventions to improve treatment adherence in the CF population.
Health Practitioners and the Directive Towards Compassionate Healthcare in the UK: Exploring the Need to Educate Health Practitioners on How to be Self-Compassionate and Mindful Alongside Mandating...
Health Professions Education
Helen Egan, Michail Mantzios, Andrew Jackson
2016 Concerns have been periodically raised about care that lacks compassion in health care settings. The resulting demands for an increase in consistent compassionate care for patients have frequently failed to acknowledge the potentially detrimental implications for health care professionals including compassion fatigue and a failure to care for oneself. This communication suggests how mindfulness and self-compassion may advance means of supporting those who care for a living and extends the call for greater compassion to include people working within a contemporary health care setting in the United Kingdom. The potential benefits for both health professionals and patients is implied, and may well help to create a healthier, more authentically compassionate environment for all.
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