Professor Derek Tracy is the Chief Medical Officer of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and deputy Chair of the Cavendish Square Group of London Mental Health CMOs. Derek is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, and an honorary Professor at Brunel Medical School. His PhD was in policy and cultural aspects of integrated care systems and their effectiveness. He has published over 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 20 book chapters, including editing the leading UK textbook on the coroner’s court. At the Royal College of Psychiatrists Derek is an executive member of the occupational psychiatry faculty, and in 2020 he was co-opted as one of the medical leads set-up the mental health team at the London Nightingale hospital, work that was awarded the 2021 Royal College of Psychiatrist’s
“Team of the Year”. Other notable awards include the 2024 RCPsych Presidential Medal, the 2019 Royal College of Psychiatrist’s “Communicator of the Year” award, and the 2015 King’s College
London Teaching Excellence Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Higher Education Academy, the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Dafni Katsampa and Derek Tracy get all cultured and summarise a retrospective cohort study of museum attendance and dementia incidence, which suggests that cultural engagement may help protect us from cognitive decline.
The research is led by Daisy Fancourt who heads up the new MARCH Network which is launching later this month.
Jenny Collom, Maria Giorgalli and Derek Tracy welcome a new RCT published yesterday in The Lancet which demonstrates the benefits of peer-supported self-management for people discharged from a mental health crisis team.
Students and Teachers from the King’s College London PNoMH Distance Learning MSc summarise a major new meta-analysis that brings together the last 60 years of placebo-controlled antipsychotic drug trials in acute schizophrenia.
Martina Sawicka and Derek Tracy take a look at the ReQOL scale (Recovering Quality of Life): a patient reported outcome measure (PROM) for use with people experiencing mental health difficulties.
Derek Tracy takes a first look at the Novel Psychoactive Substances in the UK Project; an NIHR-funded empirical and conceptual review that recommends research priorities in the field.
Judith Harrison publishes her debut blog on a recent cohort study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, which shows that the “mortality gap” is increasing for people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Derek Tracy and Lisa Lloyd look back over the last 17 years of mental health crisis care and consider the findings of a new survey of Crisis Resolution Teams in England.
Derek Tracy writes his debut Mental Elf blog on a recent study that explored the clinical factors that impacted on outcomes in crisis resolution services across two large mental health Trusts in London.
