The ESCAP aims to promote the mental health and wellbeing of children, adolescents and their families through strengthening research relationships and disseminating findings across Europe. 

Professor Andrea Danese joins international colleagues on the ESCAP governing board, as General Secretary and co-chair of the Academic Division (UK), for a four-year tenure. The role of the academic division is to act as a forum for an exchange of scientific research and to promote education and training, especially research training, in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health.

The elections took place during the 20th ESCAP International Congress in Copenhagen between 29 June – 1 July 2023. Professor Danese was also one of the State-of-the-art speakers at the congress, giving a talk entitled ‘Childhood adversity and psychopathology: bridging from population science to clinical practice’.

Andrea Danese is Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and the Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London as well as Professor Adjunct at the Yale Child Study Center. He leads the Stress & Development Lab. Research from his team has led to highly-cited publications on the measurement of childhood trauma, risk factors for trauma exposure, biological mechanisms through which trauma affects later health, mechanisms of resilience, modelling of individualised risk prediction for trauma-related psychopathology, and the epidemiology of child trauma and trauma-related psychopathology. He is a co-investigator on the Environmental-Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study which follows 2,232 British twins born in 1994-1995. He is also a co-investigator on the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a life-course investigation of 1,037 individuals born in 1972-1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Professor Danese has also established and leads the National & Specialist CAMHS Clinic for Trauma, Anxiety, and Depression at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. The service attracts referrals from across the UK and abroad for second opinion on diagnosis and specialist treatment of difficult-to-treat young people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, and unipolar depression. The clinic has also advised and worked with the UK government to develop public mental health interventions in the aftermath of emergencies and disasters.

Professor Danese's research and clinical teams will soon move to the new Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People, set to be the world-leading centre for child and adolescent mental health. Developed by the King's Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People, a unique collaboration between the IoPPN, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and the Maudsley Charity, the centre will bring together clinical and academic excellence to ensure that research is translated into practical treatments to benefit young people in the shortest possible time.

ESCAP is a not-for-profit association which aims to improve the lives of children, adolescents and their families and to ensure children’s right to support for healthy mental development and appropriate preventive and therapeutic mental health services and interventions. To achieve this, ESCAP fosters knowledge and skills in child and adolescent psychiatry in Europe, disseminates the results of research through scientific publications and meetings, enhances the bonds between European countries on mental health issues, and collaborates with other international organisations with the same or related aims.