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Naomi Fineberg Secretary for Clinical External Affairs: Professor Naomi Fineberg, PhD

Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, Welwyn Garden City. naomi.fineberg@btinternet.com
Secretary for Clinical External Affairs until 2013

Naomi Fineberg was trained in Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge and Guy’s Hospital, London, and in Psychiatry at St Mary’s Hospital, London, where she was privileged to be taught by Professor Stuart Montgomery, who inspired my enthusiasm for clinical psychopharmacology research and encouraged her interest in obsessive compulsive disorders. It was Stuart who suggested she become a member of the BAP, and since my first SHO post she have enjoyed a rewarding association with the Association. She has lectured and organised symposia at Annual Meetings and taught on the Certificate in Psychopharmacology course.

After three years as a Consultant Psychiatrist at St. Mary’s, in 1997 she moved to her current post at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital (QEII), Welwyn Garden City, to be closer to her home and family. As an NHS clinician, she has benefited from the flexibility to work part-time, whilst developing a broad academic and research base. Her aim has been to marry collaborative research, crossing clinical and preclinical domains, with improved clinical practice, focussing on my chosen area of impulsive/compulsive disorders. In this respect, the establishment of the first National NHS Service for Treatment-Resistant Obsessive Compulsive Disorders at the QEII Hospital, in April 2007, signified an important advance. She has enjoyed collaborating on OCD research with centres of expertise in UK and worldwide.

Her current work includes integrated clinical, neurocognitive, neuroimaging and genetic investigation of phenotypes and endophenotypes of OCD and related disorders; comorbidity between anxiety and non-anxiety disorders such as schizophrenia, depression; the psychobiology of impulsiveness and compulsiveness in humans and other animals. She has published two books, about 15 peer-reviewed chapters and 60 peer-reviewed papers, largely in the fields of OCD, anxiety and depression. In 2005 she was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield. She also hold clinical posts as Lead Consultant in General Adult Psychiatry, Acute Admissions Unit, QEII Hospital, and Medical Director of the National Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Specialist Treatment Service (National Services Commissioning Advisory Group (NSCAG); England), and Honorary Senior Research Fellow/Lecturer posts at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College, London. She led the psychopharmacology subgroup on OCD for the UK National Institute of Clinical Excellence (2004-6) and advised the BAP on its 2006 Guidelines for Anxiety Disorders.

She is Secretary of the International College of Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders and a member of the Cochrane Collaboration Review Teams for Evidence-Based Neurosurgery for Anxiety, OCD and Depression (2007) and treatments for trichotillomania (2007). She sits on the APA DSM-V working group for OCD and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Forum for Mood and Anxiety Disorders (IFMAD). She values the opportunity to work within the BAP Council, and trusts that her experience as an ‘academic clinician’ and the connections she has developed, within and outside the UK, may be of benefit to the wider membership.

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  1. InVivoStat Statistical Analysis on 23rd August 2010
    New BAP Education web page describing InVivoStat: The Statistical Tool for all Psychopharmacologists. Click here to read more InVivoStat
  2. Information for the Public on 4th August 2010
    We are pleased to launch our Public Web Pages. These are intended for members of the public with an interest in psychopharmacology. Public Web Page
  3. Review of Mental Health Research on 5th July 2010
    In 2009, BAP contributed to the Medical Research Council’s Review of Mental Health Research. The Report has recently been published. A summary report may be found here; MRC Mental Health Research Summary Report. Professor Barbara Sahakian, who will become BAP President-elect later this month, has written an article in the Lancet “A UK strategy for mental health and wellbeing”, also available here; Lancet article

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