Kate Saunders

DPhil MRCPsych FHEA

Associate Professor

Director of Medical Studies
Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist
Oxford Postgraduate Psychiatry Course Organiser
Academic Foundation Lead

Mood instability, Borderline personality disorder, Bipolar disorder, medical education

My early research focused on suicidal behaviour, while my doctorate explored psychiatric phenotypes. As part of this work I conducted one of the first studies to distinguish bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder on the basis of cognitive function and social behaviour. In 2014 I was given a NARSAD Young Investigator award by the Brain and Behaviour Foundation to study whether deficits in social cognition are a valid treatment target in borderline personality disorder. Alongside this, in conjunction with colleagues at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering I set-up, and am the clinical lead for, the AMoSS study, which uses smart-phones and wearable devices e.g. actigraphs, to prospectively explore mood and related behavioural variables in a cohort of bipolar and borderline patients. This has integrated with my current role in the Wellcome Trust funded CONBRIO programme, which focuses on deep and frequent phenotyping of mood instability and the development of new mathematical approaches to the analysis of mood and related data.

I also the course organiser for the Oxford MRCPsych Course.

I am funded by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award: Collaborative Oxford Network for Bipolar Research to Improve Outcomes (CONBRIO). I was a graduate scholar at Jesus College Oxford and have been awarded the Florence Stoney studentship by the British Federation for Women Graduates.

Collaborators

Key publications

Borderline personality disorder, but not euthymic bipolar disorder, is associated with a failure to sustain reciprocal cooperative behaviour: implications for spectrum models of mood disorders.
Journal article

Saunders KEA. et al, (2015), Psychol Med, 45, 1591 - 1600
Evidence-based guidelines for treating bipolar disorder: Revised third edition recommendations from the British Association for Psychopharmacology.
Journal article

Goodwin GM. et al, (2016), J Psychopharmacol, 30, 495 - 553
Variability in phase and amplitude of diurnal rhythms is related to variation of mood in bipolar and borderline personality disorder
Journal article

Carr O. et al, Scientific Reports
Circadian rest-activity patterns in bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder.
Journal article

McGowan NM. et al, (2019), Transl Psychiatry, 9
A path signature approach for speech emotion recognition
Conference paper

Wang B. et al, (2019), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH, 2019-September, 1661 - 1665

Recent publications

“Have I argued with my family this week?”: What questions do those with lived experience choose to monitor their bipolar disorder?
Journal article

Gordon-Smith K. et al, (2020), Journal of Affective Disorders
Motivations, barriers and social media: a qualitative study of female uptake into Neurosurgery
Journal article

SAUNDERS K. et al, (2020), British Journal of Neurosurgery
Blood pressure in bipolar disorder: evidence of elevated pulse pressure and associations between mean pressure and mood instability
Journal article

MCGOWAN N. et al, (2020), International Journal of Bipolar Disorders
Learning to Detect Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder with Language and Speech in Non-Clinical Interviews
Conference paper

WANG BO. et al, (2020), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH
Bipolar Disorder: trimodal age at onset distribution.
Journal article

Bolton S. et al, (2020), Bipolar Disord
Personal protective equipment and infection prevention and control: a national survey of UK medical students and interim foundation doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic
Journal article

Norton EJ. et al, (2020), Journal of Public Health
Mood Homeostasis, Low Mood, and History of Depression in 2 Large Population Samples.
Journal article

Taquet M. et al, (2020), JAMA Psychiatry, 77, 944 - 951
Insomnia as a mediating therapeutic target for depressive symptoms: A sub-analysis of participant data from two large randomized controlled trials of a digital sleep intervention.
Journal article

Henry AL. et al, (2020), J Sleep Res
Efficacy of digital cognitive behavioral therapy for moderate-to-severe symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial.
Journal article

Carl JR. et al, (2020), Depress Anxiety
A computational phenotype of disrupted moral inference in Borderline Personality Disorder
Journal article

Siegel J. et al, (2020), Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging

More publications