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

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
The influence of borderline personality traits on clinical outcomes in bipolar disorder.
Conference paper

Saunders KEA. et al, (2020), Bipolar Disord
The influence of borderline personality traits on clinical outcomes in bipolar disorder
Journal article

SAUNDERS K. et al, (2020), Bipolar Disorders: an international journal of psychiatry and neurosciences
Predictors of mental health and academic outcomes in first-year university students: Identifying prevention and early-intervention targets.
Journal article

Duffy A. et al, (2020), BJPsych Open, 6
A Computational Phenotype of Disrupted Moral Inference in Borderline Personality Disorder
Journal article

Siegel J. et al, (2020), Biological Psychiatry, 87, S113 - S114
Prevalence and Incidence of Clinical Outcomes in Patients Presenting to Secondary Mental Health Care with Mood Instability and Sleep Disturbance.
Journal article

McDonald K. et al, (2020), Eur Psychiatry, 1 - 32
Efficacy of digital cognitive behavioural therapy for symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder: a study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.
Journal article

Gu J. et al, (2020), Trials, 21
Mood Homeostasis, Low Mood, and History of Depression in 2 Large Population Samples.
Journal article

Taquet M. et al, (2020), JAMA Psychiatry

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