Research and Impact

My published and applied work sits at the intersection of child and adolescent psychiatry, NHS CAMHS, and planetary health — with a consistent focus on the clinical evidence, the services that use it, and the populations that need it most. It comprises one peer-reviewed systematic review and meta-analysis in CNS pharmacotherapy, over twenty published audit and quality-improvement abstracts in the supplementary volumes of BJPsych Open (RCPsych Congress and Faculty Conference proceedings), quality-improvement work in NHS Scotland that has changed local practice and contributed to a regional policy revision, and ongoing policy engagement through the Royal College of Physicians' Sustainability Scholarship and the IACAPAP Donald J. Cohen Fellowship. Entries below are grouped by the problem they address, with publication type noted.

Planetary Health & Youth Mental Health

The most sustained thread in my work. Begins with a 2023 piece on climate and medical education, runs through the first published survey of climate distress in a Scottish CAMHS service, and continues through the RCP's Planetary Health and Sustainability Committee as a 2025–2026 Sustainability Scholar.

BJPsych Open supplement, 2025 — published survey abstract.

Climate distress is arriving in youth mental-health services faster than the services can describe it, let alone respond. This survey of NHS Grampian CAMHS clinicians maps what frontline teams are seeing, what they are being asked to do, and where their training runs out. A starting evidence base for products positioned against eco-anxiety and for any health system designing youth planetary-health pathways.

Rewilding Medical Education

BJPsych Open supplement, 2023.

Medical education has not caught up to the climate crisis, and the health consequences are already clinical. This piece sets out what a rewilded curriculum would look like — what clinicians need to be trained to recognise, respond to, and commission. Anchors the line of work that has since become my 2025–2026 RCP Sustainability Scholar role.

CAMHS Service Design & Practice

Where young people present in crisis, the service they meet is frequently the wrong one. Two 2025 published audit and service-design abstracts describe the gap and the alternatives developed in Aberdeen.

BJPsych Open supplement, 2025 — published audit abstract.

Admitting a young person to an adult psychiatric ward is a compliance risk and — more often than is widely recognised — a routine occurrence. This audit examines the frequency and drivers in a Scottish board and the legal compliance questions that follow. Relevant evidence for anyone working on age-appropriate crisis capacity.

Enhancing Mental Health Support for Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Young People: A Collaborative Pathway in Aberdeen

BJPsych Open supplement, 2025 — published service-development abstract.

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people arrive with complex trauma and no default mental-health follow-up. This project describes a cross-sector pathway in Aberdeen linking CAMHS, social care, and third-sector partners. A replicable architecture for services that need to be built around a displaced youth population rather than retrofitted to absorb them.

Evidence Synthesis in CNS & Neurodevelopmental Care

Topiramate Therapy in Cocaine Use Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials

Trends in Psychiatry & Psychotherapy, 2025 — peer-reviewed research article.

Cocaine use disorder has no approved pharmacotherapy, and the repurposing case for topiramate has sat unresolved for a decade. This meta-analysis of the available randomised evidence clarifies where the signal is real and where it is noise. A usable reference for formulary committees, payor medical teams, and any CNS developer considering an adjacent mechanism.

ID Crisis Resolution: Novel Approaches in NHS Highland

BJPsych Open supplement, 2023 — published service-development abstract.

Crisis care for adults with intellectual disability is scarce, expensive, and frequently defaults to inpatient admission. This abstract describes a community-based crisis response model developed in NHS Highland — what it does, who it serves, and what has to be true for it to work. Relevant to community-care commissioners and anyone working on alternatives to inpatient ID pathways.

Quality Improvement & Practice Change

Seclusion Practice for Adults with Intellectual Disability — Audit and Re-Audit

NHS Highland (New Craigs Psychiatric Hospital), 2022–2023. Supervised by Dr Sheena Jones, Consultant in Intellectual Disability Psychiatry.

Adherence to the Highland Seclusion Policy and Procedure was poor at baseline: documented two-hourly reviews including a plan to end seclusion were completed only 1% of the time, Datix incident reports only 34%, and the senior charge nurse was not informed in 64% of cases. I led a four-arm intervention — presentation of findings at the Clinical Governance meeting (29 November 2022), structured briefings for nursing staff on Willows ward, a teaching session embedded into the February 2023 junior-doctor induction, and contribution to the Service Leadership Working Group revising the regional Seclusion Policy and Procedure (Mental Health & Learning Disabilities Services, Highland Health and Social Care Partnership). At re-audit (June–July 2023), seclusion frequency for the index patient had fallen from 32 episodes to 6 over a comparable period; PRN anxiolytic was offered 100% of the time; duty-doctor attendance with documented plans to end seclusion rose from 1% to 100%; and Datix submission rose from 34% to 83%. The work contributed to the regional policy revision and was recognised with the 2024 NHS Education Scotland Medical Directorate Award.

Contextualised Psychological First Aid for Youth Refugees

NHS Highland and Assam, India, 2022–2025.

School teachers and frontline staff working with displaced young people typically receive no formal training in non-clinical psychological crisis support, and the standard WHO 4.5-hour PFA programme is rarely deliverable within their schedules. I designed and led two contextualised PFA programmes adapting the WHO modules to local context. The first, in collaboration with NHS Resilience and Highland Council, delivered a two-session online module to 32 teachers across the Scottish Highlands working with Ukrainian and other refugee students (December 2022). The second, in collaboration with the Vartamaan Care Network Foundation and a mentor from Sangath, delivered a multi-session in-person programme to 75 teachers at Budding Buds Senior Secondary School, Tinsukia, Assam (2024–25), preceded by teacher and student surveys to inform the contextualisation. Pre-/post-test data in the Highlands showed reduced misconceptions about trauma and increased confidence to act; in Assam, the largest documented effect was a marked increase in student self-referrals to the school counsellor following the intervention. A train-the-trainer follow-up model is now in development for the Assam site. The work was presented at the National CAMHS Conference, Scotland (2024) and the International Psychiatric Congress (2025).

Active & Ongoing Work

Royal College of Physicians Sustainability Scholar (2025–2026). Member of the RCP Planetary Health and Sustainability Committee, working on policy frameworks that connect climate-health obligations and young-person wellbeing. Institutional home for the planetary-health line of work and the source of the 2025 CAMHS climate-distress survey.

Donald J. Cohen Fellowship for International Scholars — IACAPAP (2026). The leading international fellowship in child and adolescent mental health, awarded to a small cohort annually. Runs over 2026 with international placements and a scholarship output.

Scoping review of forensic CAMHS at the local-authority interface (All of North of Scotland). Systemic analysis of where forensic pathways for young people run into local-authority capacity limits. Case material is not discussed publicly.

Selected International & National Presentations

2025 — International Psychiatric Congress. Clinicians' Perspectives on Climate Change and Mental Health.

2024 — National Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Conference, Scotland. Contextualisation of Psychological First Aid for Youth Refugees: A Cross-Cultural Implementation in Scottish Highlands and Assam, India.

2023 — International Psychiatric Congress. Psychiatry Trainees' Attitudes Towards Psychosocial Disabilities.

Other Published Work

Listed here for completeness; see my ORCID record for the full list. All are published abstracts in BJPsych Open supplementary volumes unless otherwise noted.

Clinician Perspectives and Practices in Addressing Substance Use Among Children and Adolescents in NHS Grampian CAMHS, 2025. DOI

Adapting to Smoke-Free Psychiatric Care: Audit of Patient Behaviour, Medication Management, and Staff Challenges, 2025. DOI

Intimate Partner Violence in Same-Sex Relationships: Are We Aware of the Implications? — Journal of Psychosexual Health, 2022. DOI

COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Residential Psychiatric Inpatients, 2021. DOI