Psychological Medicine Research
The Oxford Psychological Medicine Research group aims to improve the lives of people with medical-psychiatric multimorbidity through high quality research. We research the psychological and psychiatric problems of patients with medical conditions, develop innovative treatments to address these, and test the treatments in rigorous randomised trials.
The Psychological Medicine Research group moved to Oxford from Edinburgh in 2011.
The work we have done to date includes the development and evaluation of treatments for patients with depression and cancer, medically unexplained neurological symptoms and chronic fatigue syndrome.
We are currently studying new ways of delivering psychiatric and psychological care for the medically ill in the following projects:
- The HOME Study: In this study we will research whether adding a new approach (sometimes called Proactive Liaison Psychiatry) to the identification and management of psychological problems reduces the time that older people spend in acute general hospital wards. We will recruit approximately 3,244 patients aged 65 and older, who have been admitted to acute wards in hospitals in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Devon. The study is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme.
- The Oxford Cancer Centre Improving Care Study: In this project we will study the introduction of ‘Depression Care for People with Cancer’ (DCPC), a systematic approach to managing depression in cancer outpatients. This is an implementation study funded by the Oxford NIHR CLAHRC of the treatment system we have developed and evaluated in Cancer Research UK funded randomised trials. The work is a collaboration between Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford University Department of Psychiatry and the Macmillan Cancer Support charity.
- Talking about Dying: This study is funded by the Oxford NIHR CLAHRC. In this project we will determine what proportion of older medical inpatients have a discussion about resuscitation with their hospital doctors. We will also study doctors’ experiences and views of discussions about resuscitation with older inpatients.
- The nature and associations of symptoms in patients with cancer. This work is part funded by the Oxford NIHR CLAHRC and is a secondary analysis of a large Scottish NHS dataset of the symptoms suffered by cancer patients, the creation of which was funded by Cancer Research UK. It is being conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.