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Mind the Gap: Psychiatry and Public Mental Health

Professor Scott Weich

Tuesday 21 October 2008

Scott Weich was appointed Professor of Psychiatry at Warwick Medical School in June 2003.

Scott studied Medicine at Cambridge University and Barts Hospital in London before embarking on a career in Psychiatry. Specialist training at the Maudsley Hospital, London School of Hygiene and Institute of Psychiatry led to a Senior Lectureship at the Royal Free in 1996. Throughout his career he has practised as a Psychiatrist in the NHS. In 2004, he helped set up a recovery-based Day Hospital in Coventry.

Severe mental illness, though devastating, represents the tip of an iceberg of morbidity, little of which ever presents to psychiatrists. This iceberg has a huge impact on society, particularly in primary care, the workplace and home. It is all the more surprising how little attention or funding is given to trying to reduce this burden. Scott's research has concentrated on the wider societal aspects of all forms of mental disorder, including the causes, care and consequences for people who experience these conditions. This work has employed epidemiological methods, and especially cohort studies and secondary analysis of complex data sets.

Previous projects include an evaluation of the effects of an urban regeneration programme in north London on the mental health of local residents, a population-based cohort study of socio-economic and geographical variation in rates of common mental disorders in Britain, and a national study of under-treatment of depression in primary care