Inaugural Lecture of Professor Rachel Upthegrove

Join Professor Rachel Upthegrove for her Inaugural Lecture, hosted at the Leonard Deacon Lecture Theatre which is located in the Birmingham Medical School (University of Birmingham). In-person registration for the event can be found here. 

Developing new treatments for psychosis: more than getting by with a little help from my friends.

Register for hybrid access via Zoom here.

Mental health, mental wellbeing and mental illness have never had so much public attention, and most people would agree new treatments, and ways to deliver these are much needed. Developing new treatments for people with severe mental illness needs a team approach reaching across many disciplines in medicine, humanities, and personal experience. I will outline the breadth, depth, and success of our truly interdisciplinary work, together with (some!) of the personal journey I have taken to become relatively successful in leading team science, with failures, fun and advice ignored along the way. 

Rachel trained in Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, University of London and Psychiatry in Birmingham. She completed her PhD at the University of Birmingham, investigating depression and suicidality in first episode psychosis. Her recent research is the identification of novel treatments for early stages of schizophrenia, and she leads the Psychosis Immune Mechanism Stratified Medicine Study, a collaborative multi-stage project investigating inflammatory mechanisms of psychosis.

Her studies also take translational research into practice, including the NIHR funded co-designed Early Psychosis Informatics into Care (EPICare) study. She is chief investigator and co-investigator on a number of randomized controlled trials for repurposed and targeted treatments. Rachel is Incoming Chair of the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Consortium, Lead of the Mental Health Mission Midlands Translational Research Centre of Excellence and Honorary General Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology.

Everyone is welcome to this event, and all are invited to join Rachel after the lecture for refreshments in the Wolfson Common Room.