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Tom Burns

CBE MD DSc FRCPsych


Emeritus Professor of Social Psychiatry

Professor of Social Psychiatry at Oxford from 2003 to 2015. Before that I was Professor of Community Psychiatry at St George's Medical School London. My research has been predominently health services research, focusing on the nature of interactions in different team structures. Towards the end of my career I was occupied with large-scale (by mental health standards) pragmatic effectiveness RCTs. The questions in these RCTs arose from my clinical experience and also from my experience as Clinical Director for Adult General Psychiatry Servies which role I held in both St George's and Oxford.

In retirement I have focused on issues around continuity of care in psychiatry and aspects of its histroy - most recently co-eding a book on the radical Italian psychiatry reformer Franco Basaglia.