Professor Eric Emerson’s career has taken him from manchester to newfoundland and from kent to lancaster. But, as he tells Thelma Agnew, he has always strived to bring about change for the benefit of service users

In the late 1970s Eric Emerson, now 55, worked in an innovative mental health service in Manchester, providing clinical psychology services to general practices. ‘It was problematic. I would sit in a GP’s office trying to help people in very difficult situations – in a sense, telling them that it really wasn’t so bad. Often, women would come in very depressed and anxious and as they described their lives, I thought, “Well, in your position I would be pretty depressed”’. He had earlier spent a year working in a learning disabilities hospital, and the specialty now became much more appealing. ‘I gravitated back to learning disabilities because it struck me that there you did have the possibility of bringing about more significant change.’