Jim is an internationally recognised expert in stress management. Aware that health-care organisations were seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of those suffering from stress and, therefore, unable to do any significant preventative or early intervention work, he devised Stress Control over thirty years ago as an attempt to improve outcomes for individuals while, at the same time, hugely improving efficiency by offering evidence-based help to many more people than individual approaches would allow.

At the time, this was a highly unusual approach. However following peer-reviewed research and evaluation showing how well this approach worked, the class has become widely available across the world.

Jim has presented at many national and international conferences and events and acted as a National Advisor to the Scottish Government. He is involved with the European Union on how to develop mental health services across Europe using interventions, including Stress Control, he has devised. Jim is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies, the lead CBT organisation in the UK and Ireland and had been appointed a Chartered Scientist.

He has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has written two influential books on stress management –StressPac, Harcourt Brace, 1997; Treating Anxiety and Stress, Wiley, 2000. He co-edited The Oxford Guide to Low-intensity CBT Interventions, Oxford University Press, 2010, contributing four chapters including one on Stress Control. He reviews books and research articles for a range of publishers and journals.

He worked for over thirty years as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with the NHS and was the originator of the highly innovative and successful ‘Glasgow Steps’ approach to common mental health problems – an approach increasingly copied across the world.

Jim now trains organisations to run Stress Control classes and is currently developing new versions of the class, e.g. for schools, young people, Universities and prisons along with wellbeing versions for use by those involved in sport. He has helped partners in India, Silver Oak, to develop an online version of the class.