About the Psychopharmacology Committee
Vacancy for Committee Chair
The Psychopharmacology Committee is advertising for a new Committee Chair.
If you would like further information on the post, please see the job advert.
Contact the committee
If you are interested in the work of the committee, please contact hayley.shaw@rcpsych.ac.uk.
Committee members
Professor Oliver Howes BM BCh MA MRCPsych PhD DM
Oliver Howes is Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and London Institute of Medical Sciences, Imperial College, London. His clinical work is as Consultant Psychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital where, amongst other things, he runs a service for people with refractory psychoses.
His research interests centre on the causes and treatment of psychosis. His recent work has focussed on understanding the role of dopamine and neuroinflammation in the development of psychosis, the effects of antipsychotic drugs on the nervous and endocrine systems, & the causes of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.
This work has been recognised through a number of awards including the Schizophrenia International Research Society Rising Star Award 2013, European Psychiatric Association Biological Psychiatry Prize (2012), the Royal Society of Medicine Psychiatry Prize (2010), Royal College of Psychiatrists research prize (2005), and the British Association of Psychopharmacology Clinical Psychopharmacology Prize (2007). He was made an honorary associate of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2006.
Other career highlights include working as a junior potato scrubber on a farm. He spends his spare time selflessly trying to find the world’s best ice cream.
Declaration of interests
He has received investigator-initiated research funding from and/or participated in advisory/ speaker meetings organised by Angellini, Autifony, Biogen, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Heptares, Global Medical Education, Invicro, Jansenn, Lundbeck, Neurocrine, Otsuka, Pangea/Ontrack, Sunovion, Recordati, Roche, Rovi and Viatris/ Mylan. He was previously a part-time employee of Lundbeck A/v. Dr Howes has a patent for the use of dopaminergic imaging.
Professor Belinda Lennox FRCPsych DM
Belinda Lennox is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in the Early Intervention in Psychosis service for Oxford Health NHS FT.
She trained in General Adult Psychiatry in Nottingham, Oxford and Cambridge. Her interests are in discovering the causes of and developing more effective treatments for those with psychosis and in implementing those discoveries into clinical practice. She has undertaken neuroimaging studies to explore the brain basis of auditory hallucinations, and of different mood states in bipolar disorder.
Her current research is in the autoimmune basis of psychosis and she runs a clinic, jointly with neurologists, to assess and treat people with autoimmune psychosis, as well as running a clinical trial to test out this new approach.
She is leading the evaluation of point of care devices for improving physical healthcare in those with mental illness, and undertakes health services research, aiming to develop the best model of care for people with psychosis.
Declaration of interests
Institutional funding from Johnson and Johnson, Angelini, Arialys therapeutics and Argenx for scientific advice, investigator initiated research, and/or participating in educational events.
Professor Thomas R E Barnes MD FRCPsych DSc
Thomas R. E. Barnes is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Imperial College London, and joint head of the Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
His research in schizophrenia and its treatment has generated over 350 publications, including the Barnes Akathisia Rating Scale. He is a Past President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and received the BAP Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Past roles include membership of the Committee on Safety of Medicines and guideline groups for NICE and the BAP. He is a co-editor of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines.
Declaration of interests
No current conflicts of interest.
Nicola is the deputy Chief Pharmacist at Essex Partnership University NHS Trust having previously been in a number of lead clinical roles in Mental Health Trusts. She is the registrar of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy (CMHP) and has been co-opted onto the committee to strengthen the link between the two organisations and support joint initiatives.
Nicola has been involved in a number of projects spanning different areas such as introducing a physical formulary across a mental health trust, supporting the development of the specialist pathway for mental health pharmacists, using prescribing indicators to improve psychotropic prescribing and improving clinicians and patients access to resources for medication.
Recently she has become interested in the impact of ethnicity on mental health treatments and outcomes and is currently involved in looking at updating research on mental health treatments across different ethnicities and is part of a working group to look at reducing restrictive interventions and improving early access to services to improve management of patients from all backgrounds. She has joined the working group on pharmacogenetics in mental health which is investigating how psychiatry may be able to use personalised medicines to improve outcomes.
Professor Argyris Stringaris
Argyris Stringaris is a clinician and neuroscientist and Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCL since January 2022 and a Co-Director of the AIM lab and clinic at UCL. He is also one of UCL's Pro-Vice-Provosts co-leading the Grand Challenges for Mental Health and Wellbeing. He was until 2022 Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section of Clinical and Computational Psychiatry at NIMH/NIH in the USA and before that a Senior Lecturer and a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London.
He trained in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and is also a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Athens in Greece. He has two main research aims that he pursues using open science practices including data and code sharing.
In terms of basic research, his aim is to understand how affective phenomena (variably termed moods, emotions, feelings or affects) are generated and maintained. See examples one and two of his work.
Currently, he and colleagues are funded by the Wellcome Trust to study surprises as a mechanism of improvement in social anxiety.
In terms of clinical research, he studies interventions that reduce the negative impact that affective phenomena, have on young people and families and possible interventions. See work about suicidality and work on interventions.
He also tries to increase awareness of statistics and inferences about public health through his work.
Declaration of interests
He has no conflicts of interest.
Declaration of Interests
No conflicts of interest.
Carmine Pariante is Professor of Biological Psychiatry at King’s College London and the editor of the mental health digital magazine Inspire the Mind.
Rupert McShane is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. He leads the Oxfordshire Interventional Psychiatry Service which has been operating a ketamine service for treatment-resistant depression since 2014. He also runs a memory clinic.
He was previously chair of the RCPsych ECT and Related Treatments Committee and led the Cochrane dementia group. His main interest is in implementation: how can we make sure that therapies of proven value can be safely adopted into the NHS?
Declaration of interest
In the past, his department has received fees for his speaking/ scientific advisory boards / involvement in phase 3 studies from Janssen, Abbott, Novartis, GE, vTv, Medivation.
Dr Konstantinos Ioannidis MD, MSc, MRCPsych, AFHEA, PhD
Dr Ioannidis is a Consultant Psychiatrist and clinical lead of the Southern Gambling Service, a regional tertiary centre for the treatment of Gambling Disorder. He is also an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Southampton, UK.
Dr Ioannidis has a clinical interest in behavioral addictions, eating disorders and OCD and an academic interest in impulsivity, compulsivity, statistical learning (methods) and resilience in mental health.
He has led on meta-analyses for the relationship between cognition and dimensions of behaviour (including impulsivity) with behavioural addictions, as well as the impact of problematic interactions with the online environment leading to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating.
He is currently developing national guidelines for the pharmacological management of gambling disorder, informed by network meta-analyses.
Declaration of interests
Dr Konstantinos Ioannidis receives a stipend from Elsevier for editorial work.
Katie Evans is the Lead Pharmacist for Adult Mental Health in Cardiff and Vale University Health Board. Her main area of interest is Treatment Resistant Schizophrenia and she is currently undertaking an MSc focused on Clozapine-Induced Gastrointestinal Hypomotility.
In terms of her practice, her role is focused in secondary care Adult Mental Health Services including Forensics and Community Mental Health Teams. She has worked in a number of psychiatry specialisms across Wales, therefore has a broad experience, including Addictions, CAMHS and LD.
She sits on the Council of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy (CMHP) and is the Consultations Lead. She has been co-opted onto the committee to strengthen the link between the two organisations and support joint initiatives.
Declaration of interest
- Lead Adult Mental Health Pharmacist – Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
- Cardiff University Independent Prescribing course Tutor
- RPS Advanced Practice Competency Committee Assessor
- HEIW – Foundation Pharmacist training package development
- Aston University MSc Student
- Council Member of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy – Consultations Lead
- Society of Academic Primary Care – Mental Health Specialist Interest Group
Dr Danilo Arnone
Dr Danilo Arnone is a full professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Ottawa.
He moved to Canada from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University where he worked from 2019 to 2023.
He previously worked at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and the Centre for Affective Disorders (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London) in the UK. He trained in England at St George’s University of London, Oxford, Manchester (PhD) and latterly at the Maudsley Hospital. He has expertise in neuroimaging, psychopharmacology, and mood disorders. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Declaration of Interest
No current conflicts of interest.
Dr Oluwafemi Popoola
Femi Popoola is a Specialty Registrar in the West Midlands currently in his final year of training as a General Adult Psychiatry. His interests include addiction and substance misuse and he is currently in an endorsement post for the subspecialty. Femi is also keen about the interplay between the arts and psychiatry and has been co-opted into the committee to work on the committee newsletter.
Declaration of interests
No conflicts of interest.
Dr Angarad Decates
Angharad de Cates is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and an Honorary Specialty Registrar in the West Midlands. Her research interests involve investigating the cognitive basis for depression and psychosis, how differences impact on symptoms and prognosis, and how we can use these differences to search for new treatments.
Declaration of Interests
She is on the editorial board of the British Journal of Psychiatry, and is a member of the British Association of Psychopharmacology.
She has received research funding from the Wellcome Trust, the Guarantors of Brain, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists; her current employment is funded by the National Institute for Health Research.
Dr Sajjad is Regional Advisor for the Trent Division and elected Executive Member of the General Adult Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He represents the General Adult Faculty in the Psychopharmacology Faculty of the college.
Dr Sajjad completed his Psychiatry training in London and Liverpool. He also has MSc in Health and Social Care Management from Liverpool John Moores University. Dr Sajjad is Consultant in General Adult Psychiatry and Executive Medical Director at NAViGO Health and Social Care. He is also Responsible Officer for the Designated Body and works closely with NHS England and General Medical Council for the implementation of robust medical governance. He is Caldicott Guardian and is author of several policies and of peer reviewed journals. He is also Honorary senior lecturer of Hull York Medical School.
Dr Sajjad has interest and expertise in mental health legislations (MCA and MHA), Drugs and Therapeutics, Clinical Governance, Medical Education, and service development. He has keen interest in promoting psychiatry as a career nationally and overseas. He has lead the organisation in becoming Approved Sponsoring Body for the GMC registration and has recruited overseas psychiatrists of various grades of training in the organisation and for wider NHS.
Declaration of Interests
None to declare.
Dr Monica Francis
Monica Francis is a Core psychiatry trainee in East of Scotland. She is excited about the prospect of blending her personality with the practical responsibilities of being a(PTC) representative. She aims to serve as a valuable connection between psychiatry trainees and the Royal College through her role to ensure best training experience for trainees.
She has a strong passion towards psychiatry as a speciality and to related clinical research.
Declaration of interests
No conflicts of interest.
Dr Carolina Schneider RCPsych MD PhD
Dr Schneider is a GMC Specialist child and adolescent psychiatrist, specialist in child and adolescent psychopharmacology. She is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a member of QNIC at the College. She is a member of the British Association of Psychopharmacology, The European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and The European Association of Psychiatry.
She continues participating in clinical, pharmacological, and epidemiological studies and research, after obtaining a PhD diploma at King's College London for my research and studies on psychosis in youth.
She is a GMC-approved clinical supervisor, educational supervisor, lead coordinator of undergraduate training and is responsible for overseeing students’ educational progress.
She works as a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist in a LSU and she has been co-chair of the national Child and Adolescent Low Secure National Network Group since 2024. She is the Medical Director for CAMHS services at Elysium Healthcare. She has been recently appointed as one of the NHS CYPMH National High Intensity Pathway Clinical Leads.
For over 25 years, Dr Schneider has been providing clinical care to thousands of young people and their families in both direct care-provider and leadership and management positions within the NHS and the private sector.
Declaration of interests
No current conflicts of interest.
Dr Ulrich Müller-Sedgwick BM MRCPsych MD PhD
Dr Ulrich Müller-Sedgwick, MD (Uni Würzburg) PhD (Uni Leipzig) works for the Government of Jersey as a consultant psychiatrist and lead clinician for adult neurodevelopmental pathways. He is a member of the Jersey Neurodiversity Strategy steering group and the Jersey Disability & Inclusion Advisory Group. From 2017-21 he was the lead clinician for the North London NHS Foundation Trust Adult ADHD Service in North London, where he continues to hold an honorary consultant position. From 2003-2017, he was based in Cambridge, where he developed the Adult ADHD Service for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) and directed an adult ADHD research group at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, where he continues to be affiliated as Visiting Researcher and Life Member of Clare Hall. He teaches and lectures at universities and mental health trusts in the UK, the Channel Islands and worldwide.
In 2024, he was appointed as (inaugural) ADHD Champion by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) and sits on their Psychopharmacology Committee and on the Executive Committee of the Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry Special Interest Group (NDPSIG). As media spokesperson on ADHD, he has been interviewed on radio (BBC Radio 4 PM, Radio 5 Drive), by newspapers (Financial Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Times) and magazines (BBC Music, Enable, Good Housekeeping, New Scientist). He is a founding executive committee member (since 2008) and former president (2019-21) of the UK Adult ADHD Network. He has contributed to NICE guidance and NHS England guidance & policy on ADHD. He is a regular speaker at national training events and international scientific conferences. He has published more than 160 book chapters, papers & policy documents.
He comes from and married into another neurodiverse family. In his free time, he enjoys family and outdoor activities, plays the viola in several orchestras (Camerata Jersey, JCC orchestra, JSO) and investigates the link between musical creativity and neurodiversity.
Declaration of interests
No current conflicts of interest.
