Grant holders
Dr Joanna Moncrieff is the Chief Investigator of the Radar programme. She is a Reader in Critical and Social Psychiatry in the Division of Psychiatry, University College London. She is also a practising consultant psychiatrist, working with a Community Mental Health Team. She has done previous research on on mechanisms of drug action in psychiatry, patient experiences of psychiatric medications, and facilitating patient decision-making in relation to the use of antipsychotic drugs.
Professor Stefan Priebe graduated in Psychology and Medicine, and qualified as Neurologist, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist in Germany. Since 1997 he has been Professor for Social and Community Psychiatry at Queen Mary, University of London. He is also Deputy Director of a registered Clinical trials Unit, and R&D Director of East London NHS Foundation Trust. He has built up the Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry which is located in the East London Borough of Newham. In 2012, the Unit became a designated WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Services Development. His research focuses on social interactions in mental health care, including the development of novel psychosocial interventions.
Nicola Morant is the qualitative lead for the RADAR study. She is an independent research consultant and a Lecturer in Qualitative Mental Health Research in the Division of Psychiatry, UCL. She has worked on a number of NIHR-funded projects in various areas of mental health including recent studies trialling interventions to enhance shared-decision making for psychiatric medication, and exploring experiences of taking antipsychotics. Her work uses mainly interviews and focus groups to give voice to the perspectives of mental health service users, and to explore the views and experiences of various stakeholder groups (service users, carers and professionals).
Vanessa Pinfold is the research director and cofounder of the McPin Foundation (www.mcpin.org), a specialist mental health research charity that champions expertise from experience in research. She is part of the RADAR grant holder team, leading PPI (patient and public involvement) in the study. Vanessa has worked in mental health services research for over 20 years and published on topics such as family involvement in healthcare, stigma and discrimination, coproduction methodology, recovery and social inclusion, and wellbeing networks. She was the secretariat for the Schizophrenia Commission in 2012, and is the chair of the Alliance of Mental Health Research funders.
Katherine Darton (BA, BSc, PhD, LGSM) gained an arts degree and spent the first years of her working life as a musician and music therapist, then went back to university to study physiology. After completing a PhD, she worked for some years as a postdoc research fellow. For the last 22 years of her working life she worked for Mind, building on her existing interest and experience to develop a wide knowledge of mental health, with a focus on the service user perspective, and an expertise in psychiatric medication.
Ruth Smith worked in social work for 30 years until retirement. She then took on the role of Carer to a family member several years ago, following an episode of 'psychosis' leading to hospitalisation. She has been actively involved in increasing her knowledge regarding mental health and alternative approaches to healing. She is opposed to the over-medicalisation of people within the mental health system and hopeful that the RADAR research will help to give new information about the treatment of people with 'psychosis'.
Rachael Hunter works as the senior health economist for PRIMENT Clinical Trials Unit. She has a particular interest in health economics in the areas of mental health, intellectual disabilities, primary care and criminal justice. Rachael previously worked for the NHS on improving and monitoring the quality of mental health services and for the Department of Health on Public Health in prisons.Ruth Smith worked in social work for 30 years until retiring. She took on the role of Carer to a family member several years ago, following an episode of 'psychosis' leading to hospitalisation. She has been actively involved in increasing her knowledge regarding mental health and alternative approaches to healing. She is opposed to the over-medicalisation of people within the mental health system and is hopeful that the RADAR research will help to give new information about the treatment of people with 'psychosis'.
Professor Glyn Lewis trained as a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and as an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His first research post was in the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London where he obtained his PhD. Before UCL he worked in the Universities of Bristol and Cardiff.
Professor Rob Horne is Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University College London (UCL) School of Pharmacy, where he is Director of the Centre for Behavioural Medicine. Following an initial decade in clinical pharmacy and medicines management within the NHS he completed a PhD in health psychology at Guys Medical School followed by a 17-year programme of research in behavioural medicine, focusing on the role of psychological and behavioural factors in explaining variation in response to treatment. His current interests centre on the development of interventions to support optimal engagement with essential treatments and effective medical innovations and on optimising the non-specific effects (placebo and nocebo components) of medicines. Professor Horne was appointed as a Founding Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 2010, and in 2011 a National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator. In 2012, Professor Horne became UCL's academic lead for the Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation (CASMI), a joint undertaking with the University of Oxford.
Professor Thomas R. E. Barnes MB BS MD FRCPsych DSc is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Imperial College London and joint-head of the Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health (POMH-UK) at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Centre for Quality Improvement. His research in schizophrenia and its treatment, which includes the West London first-episode study and clinical trials of pharmacological and psychological interventions, has generated over 300 research and review papers and book chapters. He developed the Barnes Akathisia Rating Scale, the reliability, validity and clinical utility of which has been independently demonstrated, and it is the scale most frequently used to assess drug-induced akathisia world-wide. Past appointments include President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP), membership of the Committee on Safety of Medicines and membership of NICE and BAP guideline development groups.
Professor Sonia Johnson
Professor Nicholas Freemantle
John Brouder
Lyn Kent