Louise Kenward

After a twenty-year career as a psychologist, Louise began writing in response to developing chronic illness in 2011. She has since combined the two, writing and speaking for patient and practitioner forums, on themes of complex and poorly understood illness, setting up ZebraPsych in 2020. She has particularly worked on developing understanding of the misattribution of psychogenic interpretations of chronic energy limiting conditions such as Myalgic Encephalomylitis (ME/CFS). These illnesses have been poorly addressed in medicine and research, and the historical harmful framing of ME/CFS, a complex neurological disease, as psychological in nature, contributes to continuing experiences of medical trauma for many patients today. She is currently working with the British Psychological Society (BPS) to address these themes further and is co-chair for the BPS on the Attitudes and Education group, with the Department of Health and Social Care on the implementation process for the NICE guidance for ME/CFS. She advocated discontinuing the use of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and GET (graded exercise therapy) that had long been the treatment protocol for ME/CFS, and which the new NICE guidance has now removed. She continues to write about the harm caused by terms such as medically unexplained symptoms and has forthcoming chapters in psychology and psychotherapy books on these topics.

Louise has also fostered a career in creative writing. This has culminated in a collection of women’s writing about experiences of when their bodies fail or fall from under them, co-producing Disturbing the Body in 2021 (Boudicca). Louise also secured funding from Arts Council England to compile an anthology of nature writing by writers with chronic illness and disability, commissioning work from twenty-three disabled writers and artists. Louise established a series of writing workshops as part of this project throughout 2022, exploring connections to nature for people living with illness and disability. Free to access, Louise partnered with literary, nature, and disability organisations to facilitate them. The resultant anthology, Moving Mountains, is the first of its kind (Footnote, 2023), drawing illness and disability firmly into the field of nature writing.