Supervisors: Dr Sarah Jane Fenton, Dr Nicola Wright, Dr Justin Waring

Verity is investigating whether co-production works in youth mental health, for whom it works and in what circumstances, by using a realist action research approach. She will be seeking consensus on a definition of the current principles of co-production in youth mental health services by a comparison study examining approaches to co-production in two youth mental health services in different contexts (e.g. UK/Australia). Methods  are to be co-designed with researcher-participants (and may include: survey, interview, focus groups and photo-voice).

Bio

Since qualifying in 2017 Verity has worked as an occupational therapist in mental health services with adults and young people in Birmingham. She is currently a Wellcome trust PhD candidate investigating models of co-production in youth mental health.

Participation has been central to her work with young people both as an OT and before this as a youth participation development officer for The Woodcraft Folk (2012-2014). Her masters research comprised a qualitative study which aimed to explore occupational therapists’ perspectives on barriers and facilitators to occupation-focused practice in secure mental health settings and record consensus found using nominal group technique.

Supervisors: Prof Rachel Upthegrove, Dr Jack Rogers, Prof Nicholas Barnes, Prof Zia Katshu, Prof Peter Liddle

The focus of Ed’s project is to use techniques such as big data, genetics and neuroimaging to investigate the role of inflammation in psychosis and the development of novel treatments for psychosis. His PhD is nestled within the MRC-funded Psychosis Immune Mechanism Stratified Medicine Study (PIMS), a clinical trial using an anti-inflammatory drug to try to treat the negative symptoms of psychosis.

Bio

Ed Graduated from St Georges University of London in 2017, having completed further degrees and studies in Bioethics and Medical Law at Kings College London and the University of Pennsylvania. Before starting his PhD programme, Ed was working as a NIHR-funded Academic Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry. His work combines both training and clinical practice in Psychiatry alongside academic research. As well as psychosis, Ed also has research interests in Psychedelic-Psychopharmacology and Bioethics. He sits on the Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Clinical Ethics committee and is a Trustee of Tourette’s Action UK, where he is passionate about raising awareness about Tourette’s, improving access to services and empowering people with Tourette’s and other neurodiversities in the workplace.

Supervisors: Matthew Apps, Matthew Broome

Jamie achieved his primary medical qualification from the University of Bristol in 2011 with an intercalated BSc qualification in pathology and microbiology. Having worked in multiple specialities and departments within the NHS, he has worked exclusively in the field of neurology since 2016. Currently an ST6 specialist trainee in neurology within the South West Peninsula deanery, he was awarded a research grant as part of the Wellcome-funded Midlands Mental Health and Neuroscience doctoral training program in 2022. His thesis, entitled ‘A trans-diagnostic examination of apathy and its dimensions’, under the supervision of Dr Matthew Apps and Professor Matthew Broome, seeks to explore the syndrome of apathy in patients with clinical disorders – in particular linking the symptomatology, phenomenology and underpinning neuroscience of motivation deficits, building novel psychological tasks that probe apathy dimensions, and using computational models to better characterise goal-directed behaviour.

Supervisors: Dr Helena Tuomainen & Prof Julie Taylor

The aims of this research will be to explore clinician knowledge, training, and confidence, while examining the current psychological therapies or adaptations used in child and adolescent mental health services. Alongside, understanding the satisfaction and experiences of both parents and autistic children/young people or children/young people with an intellectual disability (also known as learning disability) when receiving support for mental health difficulties. To investigate the triage and psychological treatment pathway for autistic children/young people or children/young people who have an intellectual disability. Finally, to co-design triage, assessment, treatment and discharge framework model for CAMHS that incorporates lived-experience perspectives.

The target population for this study will be autistic children/young people and children/young people with mild or moderate intellectual disability and a co-occurring mental health difficulty such as anxiety or low mood. A mixed methods approach will be used, implementing the following instruments, a quantitative mental health provider survey for child and adolescent mental health service clinicians, qualitative narrative interviews with autistic children/young people or children/young people with intellectual disability and their parents/carers and qualitative focus groups with key decision makers.

Bio

Naomi Williams, a Special Educational Needs expert, currently obtaining a doctorate on the Midlands Mental Health and Neuroscience PhD programme, is the Founding Director of Sensory Learning & Play C.I.C. Qualified in Social Work, Teaching, Training, and Authorship since 2012. She is a Clinical Specialist at Nottinghamshire Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services. Naomi shares her expertise on a global stage and currently serves as Vice President of the International Association for Youth Mental Health. 

Her versatile skills include Leadership, Bid Writing, Sleep Specialist services, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and Creative Therapies. Passionate about inclusion, her research focuses on Early Intervention Mental Health Services and Inclusion for Neurodivergent Children and Young People. She is dedicated to helping individuals realise their potential, irrespective of their backgrounds or past experiences. 

Supervisors: Professor Richard Morriss, Stuart Reeves, Grazziela Figueredo

Laurence is an academic psychiatrist interested in testing new treatments through randomised controlled trials. His PhD is focused on developing and trialling a digital mood tracking app for people with bipolar disorder.

This mixed methods PhD includes piloting and refinement of the app followed by a feasibility trial alongside a nested process evaluation. This aims to create a personalised self-management tool that promotes autonomy, insight and relapse prevention in people with bipolar in collaboration with RADAR-CNS – a pan-European project that aims to better measure and predict clinical outcomes in people with mental health disorder.

Supervisors: Prof. Paul Morgan, Dr Stefanie Thust, Dr Stefan Pszczolkowski Parraguez

The aim of Anna’s project will be to delve deeper into the effects of radiotherapy to the brain. She will be looking to measure damage to critical structures within the brain using voxel-based morphometry and correlate neurocognitive testing outcomes with structural changes and doses from patients’ radiotherapy treatments.  

Bio

Anna became a registered Clinical Scientist in 2014. She went on to become the Principal SRS Radiotherapy Physicist for the East Midlands Stereotactic Radiosurgery Service that was setup in 2016. The service has treated more than 1000 patients since it was first setup. Anna is passionate about following a career as a clinical academic and was awarded a HEE/NIHR Pre-Doctoral Bridging fellowship by the University of Nottingham prior to getting funded for her Doctoral Training Programme from the Midlands Mental Health and Neurosciences Network. Anna has been the Deputy Lead at the Brain and CNS Expert Clinical Advisory Group since 2021.

Supervisors: Dr Maria Touri, Prof Elizabeta Mukaetova-Ladinska & Dr Sarah Gong

Abs’ PhD will explore the culturally appropriate support required to meet the needs of ethnic minority communities with mental health challenges. The aspects of their lives contributing to these will be explored, such as social isolation, language barriers, displacement, loss of family ties, and mental health literacy. The research will evaluate perspectives of patients, carers, community leaders and healthcare professionals. The ultimate aims would be to improve understanding and access to provide prompt and effective support and care.

Bio

Abs is an Advanced Care Clinical Pharmacist, who has worked in senior leadership roles across thehealthcare industry, particularly Pharmacy, GP surgeries, hospitals and prisons. He is passionate about reducing health inequalities, promoting equitable access to healthcare and believes in strengthening capabilities to engage the communities we live in and offer healthcare provision, Abs is eager to utilise this opportunity to forge academic rigour with clinical application to imporve patient mental health outcomes.

Supervisors: Prof. Dorothee Auer, Prof. Kapil Sayal

Nitish is an academic ST4 speciality trainee based at the Precision Imaging Beacon, and an Honorary Specialist Registrar in Clinical Radiology. He previously completed his NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship during his core radiology training at University of Nottingham/NUH, and his subspeciality interests include paediatric neuroradiology.

Nitish completed his Academic Foundation Programme at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust. He graduated with an intercalated Masters in Medical Education, which focused on applications of Natural Language Programming.

Under this Wellcome-funded doctoral training programme, his thesis seeks to explore the potential of Deep Learning in detection of psychiatric conditions using fMRI techniques. This project aims to develop imaging protocols that extract high-yield MR features in way that is feasible and acceptable for young people with mental health conditions.

Supervisors: Dr Stefan Rennick-Egglestone, Dr Gerald Jordan, Dr Hayley Crawford

Madiha is a Specialty Trainee (ST4) in the Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability (Learning Disability) and currently an Honorary Psychiatry Registrar at Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust. She has previously worked as a NIHR-funded Academic Clinical Fellow during her Core Psychiatry Training. Her special interests include ADHD and autism.

Madiha completed her medical degree at the University of Birmingham and graduated in 2016, also having intercalated in Psychological Medicine. She completed a Masters in Public Health at the University of Warwick in 2022 where her research focused on barriers to healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities.

Her PhD will focus on how narratives presenting feedback from people with intellectual disabilities can be used to improve health services. Through this research, the aims are to understand how narratives for people with an intellectual disability have been characterised in academic literature, what their narratives can tell us about NHS experience and how these narratives of health service experience can be used to improve services.

Supervisors: Prof Christina Faull, Dr Jennifer Creese, Dr Eleanor Wilson

David’s project seeks to understand the experience of those dying using, or having recently used, non-invasive advanced respiratory support.  This is a challenging and under researched area of care and David will be using a data triangulation approach to understand the final moments of patients viewed from a staff perspective, the stories of their loved ones and an ethnographic exploration of end-of-life care.

Bio

David is an ST6 in Palliative and Internal Medicine from LOROS Hospice, he originally gained his undergraduate degree from the University of Leicester in 2016.  He returned to Leicester to complete his master’s in research methodology, which was completed in 2022.
David continues to work clinically within LOROS Hospice with specialist interest in the management of terminal breathlessness and the impact of non-invasive advanced respiratory support on the dying process.

Supervisors: Professor Joseph Manning, Dr Natalie Darko, Dr Yasuhiro Kotera, Professor Kapil Sayal

Morenike’s PhD project will explore access to mental health support for ethnic minority Children and Young People who present to acute paediatric settings with mental health issues.

Bio

Morenike is a paediatric trainee based in East Midlands North with an interest in integrated mental and physical healthcare for Children and Young People. She completed her Academic Foundation Training at the University of Nottingham, where she researched adolescents admitted to inpatient psychiatric units that were for adults or out-of-area as part of the National, multi-methods Far Away From Home (FAFH) project.

Supervisors: Dr Carla Toro, Dr Helena Tuomainen, Dr Renate Reniers

Denisse’s project aims to examine and analyse the role and impact of family and friend relationships on the mental health of young people during transition from year 12 to either university/apprenticeship/college/world of work. The project will be a mixed methods longitudinal study underpinned by systemic, attachment and ecological systems theory. The project findings and recommendations will be translated into clinical practice with young people and families to build relationships and resilience, support understanding and effect change in systems.

Bio

Denisse is a dual qualified Registered Nurse (Adults and Children), Social worker (child protection) and a Systemic Practitioner Intermediate level.  Denisse’s clinical practice has been as a Systemic Practitioner within a Family Work clinic in NHS Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and within acute care (adults and paediatrics).  Denisse also has experience of working with young parents within NHS Family Nurse Partnership and teaching and leading academic courses specialising in child and adolescent mental health. Denisse is passionate about pursuing a career as a clinical academic, progressing research that supports further understanding of the role of relationships and their impact on children, young people and family mental health.

Supervisors: Prof. Holly Blake,  Dr. Karen Mullinger and Prof. Andrew Bagshaw

The overarching aim of Irene’s project is to improve the care and treatment that people with a mild traumatic brain injury experience, by understanding the predictive value of sleep disturbances. Using a mixed methods approach, Irene will be investigating the relationships between sleep disturbance and mental health outcomes by combining actigraphy, questionnaire, brain imaging and interview data. Irene also has an interest in how demographic factors, such as age and sex, interact with clinical outcomes for individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury.

Bio:

Irene qualified as an occupational therapist in 2016 at the University of Brighton. Since qualifying she has worked in a number of clinical settings including community rehabilitation and inpatient mental health. She specialised in neuro-rehabilitation whilst working with patients with mild traumatic brain injury in New Zealand between 2019-2020. Irene currently works at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust as a senior occupational therapist in acute neurosciences, where she continues to have clinical interest in the assessment and treatment pathway for individuals with acquired brain injuries.

Irene was awarded a HEE/NIHR Pre-Doctoral Bridging fellowship by the University of Nottingham between 2023-24 and is passionate about following a career as a clinical academic, aiming to a provide meaningful and representative contribution to research and clinical practice over the course of her career.

Supervisors: Dr. Davinia Fernández-Espejo and Dr. Gemma Heath

Chandrasekar is interested in managing fatigue problems in children who have an acquired brain injury (ABI). Fatigue is linked with sleep disturbance, emotional regulation, memory, attention deficiency, and poor academic performance.  

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been used to manage fatigue in adults who have suffered from a stroke and also those who have a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. However, so far, it has not been used in the management of fatigue-related issues in children. Through the Wellcome Trust-funded PhD programme, he will conduct a mixed-method feasibility study to understand tDCS’s potential to reduce fatigue in children with ABI.  If tDCS is proven effective, it will give clinicians a new technique for managing fatigue and other co-morbidities in routine clinical practice. It will also improve the children’s quality of life and their ability to participate in everyday activities.

Bio

Chandrasekar qualified as a physiotherapist from Annamalai University and has worked in various states in India. In 2004, he moved to Cambridge and worked as a senior community children’s physiotherapist.  

He is a neuro-rehabilitation consultant therapist with experience in innovative practice, clinical leadership, service development, and clinical research.  He led neuro-rehabilitation services from 2021 and managed children with acquired brain and spinal cord injuries, supported by the wider MDT members at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. He is an active senior therapy management team member who constantly engages in service improvement activities. He was awarded the HEE Topol Digital Fellowship (2022) and the NIHR-funded MSc to PhD Bridging Programme (2019), MSc in Clinical Research (2013), and internship programme (2012).

Outside work, Chandrasekar is interested in medieval Chola’s history, ancient temple architecture, and sketching/drawing.

Supervisors: Professor Martin Orrell, Professor John Maltby, Orii Mcdermott 

Hannah’s project aims to explore hospital readmission and the support available for patients with dementia when initially discharged home. The project will aim to establish what support and characteristics influence patients with dementia to remain at home at 6 months after an acute hospital admission.  The project will take a mixed methods approach using the Camberwell Assessment of Need for the Elderly (CANE) to frame the clinical picture. Experiences of patients with dementia and their family will give deeper understanding of those initial days after a hospital admission. Hannah will then use the findings to work collaboratively with key stake holders to produce guidelines that support hospital discharge and initial discharge support for patients with dementia.

Bio

Since qualifying as an Occupational Therapist in 2010 from the University of East Anglia. Hannah has worked as an Occupational Therapist within various hospital settings and gained experience of Neuroscience, complex trauma and care for the elderly. She became Team Lead for the Trauma and Orthopaedic Service in 2015  and completed her advanced Occupational Therapy MSc in 2021.

In 2023 Hannah was seconded to the Clinical Academics Team at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and worked as a Research Associate on a study exploring hospital readmissions after hip fracture. Hannah is passionate about reducing readmissions for patients following a hospital admission. She is dedicated to develop a career as a clinical academic to pursue research that progresses acute hospital care and outcome for patients with dementia following an acute hospital admission.