From trauma to hope: Meet the Leeds woman reshaping how the NHS supports mental health
At just 14-years-old Miranda Arieh was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Sixteen years of revolving through services, labels and medication followed but so too did a determination to change the system.
Now, the mental health educator and activist has launched HEROES, a first-of-its-kind recovery programme being delivered across Leeds through the NHS.
The programme is being delivered through the Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service.
Miranda said: “Waiting lists for mental health services continue to climb, and after 16 years of being passed around services, labelled, medicated and retraumatised by the lack of care and options I experienced, I remain determined to change things for the better.
“HEROES came from the methods I created that helped me recover.
“I started to teach them and saw they worked for others too.
“It’s not about fixing people - it’s about teaching methods to communicate and work with emotional pain and fear rather than try to get rid of it, and that’s the foundation of our success.
“Education is power, and everyone deserves access to this fresh approach.”
The programme is an eight week face-to-face group therapy session led by facilitators trained according to the HEROES approach.
The aim is to shift focus from diagnosis and medication to emotional understanding, identity healing, and self-connection.
Miranda said: “We look to support people to really be able to sit with and work with and build better relationships with their experiences of emotional suffering.
“We're very much supporting people to build capacity within to hold difficult emotions and knowing that also builds capacity within to hold joy and peace.
“We want to support people to be able to hold themselves through those experiences and build a really robust sense of self.
"A unique feature of the HEROES programme is that it centres on inner child healing. Miranda notes that childhood trauma is complex and many may not realise they carry it.
“However, these formative childhood experiences can lead to feeling “frozen in time”. HEROES hopes to help individuals identify how their past experiences affect them in the present.
“Many of the HEROES facilitators have lived experience. Early participants have provided feedback that this first hand insight means that they feel more understood.”
Miranda said: “I see such golden value in lived experience. I think it's something that cannot be ignored.
“Someone teaching ways of working with suffering who has been through that suffering and lived it and breathed it is going to be very different than someone who's learned tools from a textbook.”
HEROES began when Miranda started working as an NHS Network Mental Health Lead in 2020.
When the programme was trialled in Leeds during lockdown, outcomes for HEROES participants exceeded those of psychotherapy and psychiatry according to PHQ-9 results.
HEROES has also been named as a finalist in the West Yorkshire Big Ideas Challenge, an achievement Miranda described as a “moving” sign of recognition for the programme.
She said: “We've never had such a big accolade. It's a really phenomenal achievement for us. It really really is.
“It feels amazing and on a personal level it feels quite healing as well. It feels like it's really given me a massive boost of strength and determination and drive.”
The 19 finalists of the Big Ideas Challenge have all received £20,000 to further develop their projects.
Miranda hopes to use this funding boost to upscale HEROES and create a digital version of the programme.
Miranda said: “I would love heroes to be able to reach as many people who are struggling with their emotional experience in whatever way as possible.
“I also want HEROES to transform mainstream mental health provision.”
The HEROES programme is open to adults aged 18 and over who live in Leeds.