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Professor Helen Killaspy awarded for her contribution to mental health care

5 March 2019

Professor Helen Killaspy, of UCL’s Division of Psychiatry, is the winner of the ‘EPA Constance Pascal-Helen Boyle prize of €10,000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe’ for 2019.

Helen Killaspy

Helen Killaspy, Professor and Honorary Consultant in Rehabilitation Psychiatry at UCL and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust in the UK, has spent 20 years leading research programmes that focus on improving the quality of care for people with complex mental health problems.  

In response to winning the award Professor Killaspy said: “I was absolutely thrilled to be recognised in this way – it’s a validation of the work I have done in the field of rehabilitation psychiatry, which focuses on people suffering with conditions like schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis that aren’t responding well to treatment. This group often lacks a voice to lobby for appropriate support and this award will help to raise their profile.

“My research specifically aims to assess and improve the quality of longer-term care they receive in order to help them achieve and sustain a successful life in the community.

“For the past 50 years in the UK and many other countries, there has been a major focus on developing community-based services for people with mental health issues so they can live outside of hospital settings. However, in recent years it has become clear that people with the most severe and complex problems have not been well served by policy that has tended to focus on those developing mental health problems.

“There has been a gradual disinvestment in the provision of longer-term care and this has resulted in a process of re-institutionalisation of the more complex group. It’s therefore really important that we continue to evaluate service models and interventions that can identify the best way of supporting them,” she said.

“There’s plenty more work to do in expanding the development of quality assessment tools to different types of services that work with this group across Europe and the world and to continue to develop and test interventions that will improve their quality of care and outcomes.”

Professor Killaspy will receive the Award at the 27th International Congress of the European Psychiatric Association on 6 April 2019 in Warsaw, Poland. The EPA Congress aims to facilitate discussion and educational forums on a range of topics in the field of psychiatry, psychology, social work and clinical trials.

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