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Anxiety, depression & mood disorders

Anxiety and depression are the most common mental health problems. Around six per cent of the population experience anxiety disorder, while three per cent have depression and it is a leading cause of disability worldwide. However, current treatments do not work for everyone. Mood disorders are also relatively common, with Bipolar Disorder affecting around one million people in the UK.

We’re working with industry and patients to help deliver the next-generation of fast-acting antidepressant treatments. Our research projects range from using artificial intelligence to enable GPs to work with patients to find the most effective antidepressant for them, to looking at the effects of other potential drug treatments such as ketamine and psilocybin.

Groups within this theme

We aim to understand processes of selective attention and action, learning and memory in the human brain. Through experiments in healthy volunteers and patients with brain disorders we seek to characterize how information processing networks respond (adaptively or maladaptively) when challenged by interference. Our motivation is to develop rational neurocognitive intervention strategies to help promote recovery from conditions such as depression and brain injury.

Translational NeuroStimulation Laboratory

Using computer models of behaviour, we aim to better understand anxiety and depression, and to guide the development of novel treatments.

Computational Psychiatry

Our work focuses on preventing depression, promoting mental health and human flourishing - and resourcing people to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

University of Oxford Mindfulness and Psychological Science Research Centre

We are dedicated to testing and developing new ways of improving treatments for psychiatric disorders, and maintaining brain health during aging. A significant proportion of people suffering from disturbances of mood and memory, do not respond to the available medication, and so there is an urgency to supplement or provide an alternative to current therapies.

Neurobiology and Experimental Therapeutics

We are an international multidisciplinary group of researchers, clinicians (both psychiatrists and psychologists), statisticians, methodologists and students who aim to improve the current treatment practice in the NHS and across the world, using innovative approaches from artificial intelligence and machine learning, to digital mental health and bioethics.

Oxford Precision Psychiatry Lab

We explore how the brain processes emotional information and how this is influenced by brain chemicals and medicines. This helps us to understand disorders such as depression and anxiety and to understand and contribute to the development of drug and psychological treatments.

Psychopharmacology and Emotion Research Laboratory (PERL)

Principal investigators

Michael Browning

Professor of Computational Psychiatry

Andrea Cipriani

Professor of Psychiatry

Philip Cowen

Professor of Psychopharmacology

Catherine Harmer

Associate Head of Department (People and Culture), Professor of Cognitive ...

John Geddes

Professor of Psychiatry

Philip Burnet

Professor of Neuroscience

Rupert McShane

Associate Professor

Susannah Murphy

Director of Graduate Studies Associate Professor

Andrea Reinecke

Associate Professor

Kate Saunders

Associate Professor