Centre for Affective Disorders (CfAD)

The Centre for Affective Disorders (CfAD) focuses on mood and anxiety disorders, common disorders which cause great suffering for many people.   

The CfAD is a centre of excellence for understanding the science related to these illnesses and uses this knowledge to help develop new treatments of all types including psychological and pharmacological.  

The Centre brings together a number of world-leading clinician scientists who already work at King's College London and these include Professors Anthony Cleare, Andre Tylee, Carmine Pariante, Allan Young and others.   

Affective disorders overlap with many other areas of psychiatry and medicine so we will be working with colleagues throughout King's and more widely.   

CfAD also hosts the International Society for Affective Disorders and the World Psychiatric Association Section for Affective Disorders. 

Our research areas

Affective Disorders Research Group 

The Affective Disorders Research Group works to understand more about the neurobiological causes of mood disorders (also known as affective disorders); mental illnesses where the normal functioning of mood is disrupted, including clinical depression and bipolar disorder. 

Much of this work is carried out with patients at the National Affective Disorder Unit, part of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation’s Trust National Division. Patients from across the country are referred to this service with treatment resistant depression, seasonal affective disorder and manic depression. The Affective Disorders Research Group is led by Professor Anthony Cleare.

Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology Lab and Perinatal Psychiatry 

Understanding the relationship between physical and mental health, for the enhancement of both. 

The Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology Lab and Perinatal Psychiatry (SPI-Lab) Research Group, seek to understand the body’s response to stress and whether it contributes to the manifestation of psychological symptoms.  

The research spans a variety of clinical settings, with a particular emphasis on clinical conditions where there are prominent changes in stress hormones, such as women in the perinatal period (and their infants), depression, first-episode psychosis, and patients with medical disorders such as viral hepatitis and coronary heart disease.  

Moreover, the Group and the Laboratory have a strong emphasis on biological and molecular research relevant to mental health, using both biological samples derived from patients’ populations and experimental laboratory models. 

The Group is led by Professor Carmine Pariante, Professor of Biological Psychiatry and Lead Consultant for the Liaison Perinatal Psychiatry Services at King’s College Hospital. Professor Pariante and many members of the Group are based in the James Black Centre, and work closely with the Centre for the Cellular Basis of Behaviour (CCBB). The other members of the group are based in the main Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience building. 

Mood, Anxiety and Personality Clinical Academic Group 

The South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) runs four IAPT services for depression and anxiety in the London boroughs of Southwark, Lewisham, Lambeth and Croydon (Professor André Tylee undertakes clinical work at the Southwark IAPT). 

All four IAPT services come under the management umbrella of the Mood, Anxiety and Personality Clinical Academic Group (MAP-CAG), a structure set up to facilitate greater collaboration between clinicians working in NHS services run by SLaM and researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN).  

Professor Tylee is academic director of the MAP-CAG, working with researchers from a range of departments at the IoPPN and mental health professionals working in SLaM's assessment and treatment teams (formerly called community mental health teams), psychological therapy teams, specialist services for people with personality disorders and specialist services for people with emotional and anxiety disorders. All these services are also managed via the MAP-CAG.