DoP Seminar - Dr Tessa Roberts

The November Division of Psychiatry hybrid meeting will be held on Wednesday 18 October at 3pm.

Venue: 

The vast majority of what we know about psychosis comes from a small number of high-income countries in Western Europe, North America, and Australia, which are not representative of the global population (>85% of which lives in low- and middle-income countries). As a result, our understanding of psychosis may be skewed, and it is unclear how much of the existing evidence base is applicable universally. The INTREPID programme was the first attempt in 40 years to conduct comparable studies of psychosis in multiple countries of the global south, following the seminal WHO studies of schizophrenia that concluded in the 1980s. In this presentation, I will explore how widening our view may change our understanding of psychotic conditions, present early findings from INTREPID II and a spin-off project that I am currently leading in Trinidad, and set out future priorities for this area of research.

About the Speaker

Dr Tessa Roberts

Tessa is a post-doctoral research fellow funded by the British Academy and based at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She is a member of both the ESRC Centre for Society & Mental Health and the Centre for Global Mental Health. Her current research project explores the impact of neighbourhood environments on recovery from psychosis in Trinidad, with a focus on neighbourhood violence. Tessa previously coordinated the INTREPID II programme – a multi-country research programme investigating the epidemiology of psychosis in India, Nigeria and Trinidad, led by Professor Craig Morgan and funded by the MRC – and is a co-investigator on the INTREPID III programme, which builds on previous findings to explore mechanisms underlying the risk and protective factors identified, and will work with local stakeholders to design potential interventions that are tailored to local needs. She is also a co-investigator on the SCOPE programme in Ethiopia, which shares similar aims to INTREPID II and III. Her PhD was nested in the PRIME programme and critically explored barriers to the uptake of mental health services in rural India, with a focus on depression. Tessa’s primary research interests are on tackling the social determinants of mental health in diverse settings.