The Centre was established on October 2, 2015 by Professor Naz Derakshan who also directs the Laboratory for Research into Risk and Resilience in Psychopathology and Well-being at Birkbeck University of London, UK, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/naz-derakhshan/naz-derakhshan. The Centre currently has one deputy head: Anita Traynor and six admin members, Jenny Richards, Jan Snape, Dr Caroline Humber, Bal Narray, Fiona Gibson and Andria Fruin. The Centre proudly remembers the late Vicky Wilkes, former deputy head of BRiC, and Tamsin Sargeant for their invaluable and timely contributions to making BRiC what it is.
We have a public facebook page at www.facebook.com/resilienceinbreastcancer where we publish news about recent research developments, our activities as a group and our live weekly discussions. We promote ongoing interventions for volunteers affected by breast cancer to take part in research studies assessing the effectiveness of cognitive and mental health interventions designed to promote resilience and well-being.
Our research has been funded by ESRC and Wellcome Trust grants. The Centre's first PhD student, Dr Jessica Swainston graduated on Dec. 10, 2019, having successfully defended her PhD thesis on: Understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms and improving cognitive and emotional health in women with breast cancer. Some of her research can be found here published in the top journal Psycho-Oncology, where for the first time, we report that adaptive cognitive training can result in sustainable reductions in anxiety and depression over time in women with breast cancer, for more of her work see here. The Centre has one current PhD student, Bethany Chapman, who is conducting a longitudinal study into the effects of adaptive cognitive training on improving work-ability in women with breast cancer; for more on her previous work on identifying links between cognitive and emotional vulnerability in breast cancer see here, published in the Journal Health Psychology Open.
Our research serves three main objectives: Our first aim is to unravel the cognitive and neural mechanisms behind emotional vulnerability to anxiety and depression in breast cancer. Our second aim is to target those mechanisms through reliable adaptive cognitive control training interventions designed to boost resilience and psychological well-being and health in women affected by breast cancer. Our third mission is to understand how cognitive training paradigms can boost processing efficiency which is hampered by treatment side effects in breast cancer.
As part of our ongoing funded research we will publish news about recent research developments. We will promote ongoing interventions for volunteers affected by breast cancer to take part in research studies assessing the effectiveness of cognitive and mental health interventions designed to promote resilience and well-being.
On October 19, 2015, our private psycho-educational support group was founded and provides a secure platform for members to engage in rich discussions on relevant research on the psychological impact of cancer diagnosis and treatment on cognitive health and emotional well-being in a guided manner. We are 1748 members to date (30.12.2019). Our aim is to pave our pathway of well-being towards resilience and cognitive flexibility, to promote adaptability, strength and courage. Our group is diverse and our members highly supportive of each other. The group is open to women of any age and at any stage in their treatment, including women with a primary diagnosis of breast cancer, women with secondary breast cancer and those who have finished their treatment.
For World Cancer Awareness Day, February 4, 2016, we launched The BRiC Centre's award winning Blog, ‘Panning for Gold’. The blog has been established to create a platform for sharing all the different ways that we learn to live with, and beyond, a cancer diagnosis, how we cope, through the highs and lows, the joy and the pain. It won’t be a surprise to hear that we are particularly interested in sharing and celebrating our resilience, but our hope is that the blog will be a space which reflects the many and varied experiences of women living with a breast cancer diagnosis. The blog is open to women of any age living in the UK, including women with a primary or secondary diagnosis as well as women who have completed their treatment.
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