Rebecca Syed Sheriff

Dr Rebecca Syed Sheriff is a Consultant Psychiatrist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Department of Psychiatry. She is interested in community engagement for mental health in people aged 16-24.  

After studying medicine and playing rugby at Balliol College, her career has been an international one.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK. She has lived and worked in Colombia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.  In addition, during her training at the Institute of Psychiatry, she led a project to introduce formal mental health training in Somaliland.

Since returning to the UK in March 2020, Rebecca led O-ACE (Online Active Community Engagement), a collaborative project with GLAM (Garden’s Libraries and Museums) and the Oxford Internet Institute. This project engaged people aged 16-24 to find out what supports their mental health and find ways to optimise online cultural resources.

Rebecca is the Lead Investigator for ORIGIN (Optimising cultural expeRIences for mental health in underrepresented younG people onlINne) which aims to have a positive impact on the mental health of young people and is funded by the NIHR. ORIGIN is projected to run until 2028 and is a collaboration between NHS Trusts and multiple UK universities, with museum and charity partners. The study involves listening to the experiences of diverse people aged 16-24, co-designing an online arts and culture intervention aimed at reducing anxiety and depression, and then testing this in a randomised controlled trial.