Howard Ryland

I am a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust where I am currently working in the prison service at HMP Gendon and HMP Spring Hill.  I am also an NIHR Researcher with the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre https://oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/. I hold a Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award from the National Institute for Health and Care Research. 

I am co-leading a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership for Adult Secure and Community Forensic Mental Health Services Adult Secure Inpatient and Community Forensic Mental Health Services | NIHR JLA. I am also a work package lead for the Oxford Martin School Programme on Decarceration Decarceration | Oxford Martin School.

I organise the Oxford Postgraduate Psychiatry Course https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/study/continuing-profession-development/mrcpsych-course.  I am also the Editor for the Royal College of Psychiatrists' CPD and MRCPsych eLearning resources https://elearninghub.rcpsych.ac.uk/. 

I was an Oxford Policy Engagement Network fellow at the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST) where I published a briefing for parliamentarians on approaches to improving patient choice in the recent reforms of the Mental Health Act https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0695/.

I completed a Development and Skills Enhancement award from the National Institute of Health Research, gaining skills in clinical trials. I have previously provided input in to the Treatment Resistant Depression clinic at the Warneford Hospital and the PAX-D trial.

I completed my DPhil in the University of Oxford's Department of Psychiatry in 2021, supervised by Professor Seena Fazel. I was also supervised by Professor Raymond Fitzpatrick, from the Nuffield Department of Population Health and Professor Jonathan Cook from the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences.

My DPhil project focused on understanding which outcomes are important for patients and clinicians in forensic mental health services, which was used to develop a new outcome measure for forensic mental health services called the FORensic oUtcome Measure (FORUM). This has complementary patient and clinician scales. Visit www.forensicoutcomemeasure.com for more information.

Previous roles include National Medical Director’s Clinical Fellow at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (2012-2013), Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ (RCPsych) Trainees’ Committee (2013-2014), Darzi Fellow in Medical Education (2014-2015) and President of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (2017-2018).