Dr Sarah Barber is a Psychiatry Trainee and PhD student in the Department of Health Service & Population Research. She is affiliated with CDT-Africa, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.

Sarah joined King’s College London as an Academic Clinical Fellow in 2021, and commenced the Wellcome funded CREATE PhD programme in February 2025.

Her PhD research focuses on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women with severe mental illness in Ethiopia. Using a mixed-methods approach, she examines the health disparities faced by this group and explores the perspectives of multiple stakeholders on the underlying causes and potential interventions. She is supervised by Professor Crick Lund (King's), Dr Rosie Mayston (King's), Professor Charlotte Hanlon (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Abebaw Fekadu (Addis Ababa University).

Since 2021 she has contributed to the development of a living database of intervention studies for psychosis in low- and middle-income countries, which she hopes will help to improve the impact of future research in this area.

Dr Barber holds a BA in Natural Sciences (Psychology) (University of Cambridge, 2013), Medicine (Graduate-entry) (University of Oxford, 2017) and a Masters in Public Health (University of Manchester, 2021).

Research interests

• Global mental health
• Severe mental illness
• Sexual and reproductive health

Publications

• Barber S, Mulushoa A, Hanlon C, Malla A. Psychosis and Gender: A Focus on Women in the Global South. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 2024;70(3):154-159. doi: 10.1177/07067437241295301
• Nixdorf R, Nugent L, Aslam R, Barber S, Charles, A, Meir LG, Grayzman A, Hiltensperger R, Kalha J, Korde P, Mtei R, Niwemuhwezi J, Ramesh M, Ryan G, Slade M, Wenzel L and Mahlke C. A multi-national peer support intervention: the UPSIDES pilot phase. Advances in Mental Health, 2022. doi: 10.1080/18387357.2021.2020140
• Barber S, Gronholm P, Ahuja S, Rüsch N, Thornicroft, G. Microaggressions towards people affected by mental health problems: a scoping review. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences. 2020;29.
• Thornicroft, G., Ahuja, S., Barber, S., Chisholm, D., Collins, P.Y., Docrat, S., Fairall, L., Lempp, H., Niaz, U., Ngo, V. and Patel, V. Integrated care for people with long-term mental and physical health conditions in low-income and middle-income countries. The Lancet Psychiatry. 2018
• Barber S, Brettell R, Perera-Salazar R, Greenhalgh T, Harrington R. UK medical students’ attitudes towards their future careers and general practice: A cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis of an Oxford cohort. BMC Med Educ. 2018 Jul 4;18(1):160. doi: 10.1186/s12909-018-1197-z (Commended by RCGP Research Paper of the Year Award 2018).