Elliot Sweeney has enjoyed working in mental health services for over twenty years, from low-level supported housing to secure in-patient units in both London and more rural areas in the northwest of England. As a registered psychiatric nurse and a warranted approved mental health professional (AMHP), he has specialist knowledge in the area of mental health law, with a particular focus on the uses of the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2007.

Elliot can help you unpick the major mental disorders, so that your characters feel authentic and don’t run to cliché; he can describing ‘sectioning’, and give you first hand details about the process of detaining to secure hospital or placing people on community treatment orders, and what these terms mean in reality; he can tell you about the care and management of in-patients, including those on forensic sections, what powers ward staff can and cannot use when delivering ‘treatment’, and how these patients are supported and their risks monitored post-discharge; he can also describe the realities when things go tragically wrong, ranging from suicidal acts and self-harm to inquests and attending coroners’ court.

Elliot is himself a crime writer. The Next to Die, his debut, is available from Wildfire/Hachette from February 2023 in hardback, e-book and audiobook.

Please do get in touch with him if you think he could help your writing.