Maria is a Reader in Clinical Psychology at the University of Bath, UK. Maria obtained her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of East Anglia in 2008. She has since worked clinically in the National Health Service across a variety of mental health settings, including community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and a children’s inpatient unit. She completed a post-graduate diploma in cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for children, young people, and families at the Anna Freud Centre/University College London in 2013, and a Postgraduate Certificate in the Supervision of Applied Psychology Practice at the University of Oxford in 2015. Maria secured a prestigious NIHR doctoral research fellowship (2016-2022) to further her research into depression in adolescents, specifically those with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). She is currently funded by an NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award (2022-2023) in which she is developing her work into brief, scalable early help for adolescents with depression symptoms, and has established an informal research group at the University of Bath, spotLight on Adolescent Mood Problems (LAMP), with an embedded young person’s advisory group. Maria’s research interests include: Developing and delivering Cognitive and/or Behavioural treatments for young people with depression symptoms, including those with chronic illnesses, and those who may not otherwise access help; mental health literacy; therapist competence in delivering CBT, particularly in the field of child and adolescent mental health; and CBT supervision.
Emily Hards and Maria Loades summarise a cluster randomised controlled trial exploring the effectiveness of universal process-based CBT for positive mental health in early adolescence.
Maria Loades explores a randomised controlled trial of people with depression, which looks at the impact and change of attitudes towards internet interventions.
Maria Loades explores a cross-sectional study of the combined influence of cognitions in adolescent depression, which investigates biases of interpretation, self-evaluation and memory, and concludes that a negative evaluation of the self is strongly associated with depression severity and with a diagnosis of depression.
Maria Loades writes her debut elf blog on a recent systematic review and meta-analysis on the long-term psychosocial outcomes of teenage depression, which finds that depression as a youth is linked to poor academic outcomes, unemployment and problems with relationships in adult life.
