Cris Allen, the quiet and unassuming former RCN professional lead for mental health nursing and consultant editor of Mental Health Practice, remembered

Cris Allen (1954-2024), former RCN professional lead for mental health nursing and consultant editor of Mental Health Practice, has died.

Cris worked as a builder, a milkman and in a hospital laundry before turning to mental health nursing. As well as being a registered mental health nurse, he was also a registered learning disability nurse and an active member of the RCN mental health forum before taking over from Tom Sandford as RCN professional lead for mental health in 2000.   

• RELATED: Prove me wrong over £1 billion a year in mental health funding, says senior nurse

Tom was a hard act to follow but Cris’s quiet, unassuming dignified manner soon won members over. It was a joy to catch up with him annually in Oxford at the then Network for Psychiatric Nursing Research (now Mental Health Nurse Academics UK) conference. Using his calm approach, he was a natural networker and problem solver, working alongside members to ensure mental health nurses' needs were heard and appropriately profiled in the college and beyond at conferences and through publication. 

Champion for women’s rights and advocate for people traumatised by military service

His genuine humility made him a great listener. For years he advocated for those traumatised by military service and championed women’s rights.  

• RELATED: Reflective practice is vital to the revalidation process

Lest we forget his wonderful sense of humour, realism and observational skills. Many recall roaring with laughter at his anecdotes framed around astute life appraisals, the absurdity of situations and the pomposity of some we worked with. 

After leaving the RCN, Cris took up the post of deputy chief nurse for what became the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, as well as sitting on Nursing and Midwifery Council fitness to practise panels and undertaking Care Quality Commission inspections. 

• RELATED: Six key questions for mental health nurses 

About six years ago he began displaying symptoms of what was later diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. He died, aged 70, in a care home in Hellingly, East Sussex, built, ironically, on the site of the hospital where he trained as a registered mental health nurse. 

He was much loved and will be much missed

Catherine Gamble, RCN fellow. With thanks to Cris’s brother, writer and editor Daniel Allen