Briefly, tell us about your background and career up to this point?
I trained as a mental health nurse at King’s. After qualifying, I started working as a nurse in inpatient Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I became interested in working with families, and that led me to train as a family therapist. I knew that I wanted to be involved in research, so in 2015 I started a NIHR-funded Clinical Doctoral Fellowship. This allowed me to complete a PhD part-time while working clinically in a CAMHS eating disorders service.
My PhD looked at what factors predict who benefits from family therapy for adolescent anorexia nervosa. At the end of 2021, I took up my post at King’s as a Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing. I have an honorary contract at Great Ormond Street and still see a small number of families for family therapy.
Could you tell us more about the grants you were recently awarded?
In April 2022, the government introduced new rules so that large businesses need to add calorie information to their menus. There have been concerns that this policy has had a negative impact on people with eating disorders. We will conduct a systematic review of the literature, and conduct an online survey. Then we will interview people with eating disorders, their parents/carers, and clinicians, to understand the impact of the new policy.
For the MRC-funded project to develop a clinical research network, we want to create a network of UK eating disorder services which all collect the same data and store it in a central, secure database. Through the database, we can investigate treatment outcomes across services, helping to identify the reasons why some treatments may work better than others, who benefits from existing treatments, and for whom treatment may need to be adapted.
What do you do with your time outside of work?
I spend time with my family and friends, go on walks, play a bit of piano and watch comedy shows.
What do you think people in the Faculty would find most surprising about you?
I was nearly fired from a job stacking supermarket shelves because I was so bad at it.
What advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?
Choose mental health nursing as a career.
What is your favourite thing about working at King’s?
Conducting interesting research which will hopefully make a difference in the real world.
Quick-fire...
What’s the first career you dreamed of having as a kid?
Astronaut.
What’s your hidden talent?
Juggling.
Ideal dinner party guests:
Jimi Hendrix, Dolly Parton, Fiona Apple, Donald Glover, Tony Benn, Chilly Gonzales.
Favourite quote:
‘There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.’ - Tony Benn.