Kate Saunders

DPhil MRCPsych FHEA

Director of Medical Studies

Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist
Oxford Postgraduate Psychiatry Course Organiser
Academic Foundation Lead

Mood instability, Borderline personality disorder, Bipolar disorder

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.

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
Suicidal behaviour in bipolar disorder: understanding the role of affective states.
Journal article

Saunders KEA. and Hawton K., (2015), Bipolar Disord, 17, 24 - 26
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
Rationale and design of OxLith: a randomised placebo controlled trial exploring the short-term physical and psychological effects of lithium on mood instability
Conference paper

Geddes JR. et al, (2015), BIPOLAR DISORDERS, 17, 110 - 110
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

Recent publications

Heart rate variability in bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder: a clinical review.
Journal article

Carr O. et al, (2018), Evid Based Ment Health, 21, 23 - 30
The role of serotonin in personality inference: tryptophan depletion impairs the identification of neuroticism in the face.
Journal article

Ward R. et al, (2017), Psychopharmacology (Berl), 234, 2139 - 2147
Tearing Up The Script: What we learnt delivering a creative MRCPsych course in Oxford
Poster

Lennox A. et al, (2017)
Experiences of remote mood and activity monitoring in bipolar disorder: A qualitative study.
Journal article

Saunders KE. et al, (2017), European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists, 41, 115 - 121
Diagnostic difficulty in bipolar disorder
Journal article

Saunders KEA., (2017), BJ Psych Advances, 23, 104 - 105

More publications