Dr Aditya Narain Sharma
Newcastle University and National Specialist Adolescent Mood disorders Service, CNTW NHS Foundation Trust
Dr Adi Sharma is a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Hon Consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry at Translational and Clinical Research Institute, Newcastle University and Cumbria, Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust. He has also recently taken over the role of Global Special Advisor for India working with all 3 faculties at Newcastle.
Adi’s clinical academic interests include the epidemiology of, risk factors for the development of and management strategies to target the managment of Early Onset Mood Disorders to improve psychosocial outcomes and more recently global mental health. He leads on various psychopharmacology trials and also leads on various initiatives in digital mental health.
After initial training in India, Adi trained as a Clinical Lecturer with Prof Le Couteur at Newcastle developing expertise in assessment and management of youth with complex neurodevelopmental disorders particularly youth with ASD. He furthered his experience by training with Prof Kiki Chang (Stanford University, USA), Prof Barbara Geller (Washington University at St Louis, USA) and Prof Ellen Leibenluft (NIH, USA) in the field of Bipolar Disorder.
Adi has a PhD in ‘Neurocognition and emotion labeling in bipolar offspring’ for which he was awarded the Margaret Davenport award by the faculty of child and adolescent psychiatry (RCPsych). He was chief investigator for the first Surveillance study of the incidence of Narrow Phenotype Bipolar I Disorder in the British Isles and the first paediatric bipolar disorder trial in the UK. This latter innovative project funded by the Research for Patient Benefit funding stream of NIHR is using a mixed methods approach to assess the acceptability and feasibility of using the Family Focussed Treatment for Adolescents with Bipolar Disorder (FFT-A UK version). He is also a co-applicant on an NIHR HTA trial: Clinical and cost effectiveness of a parent mediated intervention to reduce challenging behaviour in pre-schoolers with moderate to severe learning disability: a randomised controlled trial.