Inside the British Association of Psychopharmacology with Prof Catherine Harmer and Prof Naomi Fineberg
The Mental ElfShow Notes
Catherine Harmer, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Oxford and outgoing president of the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP), and Naomi Fineberg, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Hertfordshire and incoming BAP president, discuss how BAP brings together non-clinical scientists, experimental medicine researchers, clinicians, and industry to translate discoveries into patient care.
They explore growing involvement of people with lived experience through a panel shaping council work and the summer meeting, and the need to balance professional and lived-experience perspectives. Fineberg highlights BAP’s evidence-based guidelines, aimed at improving patient outcomes via clinician uptake, and plans to strengthen dissemination through NHS engagement, accessible formats, training, and webinars. They also address support for early career researchers and pipeline challenges, strategy implementation during the presidential handover, and how global stressors and emerging digital and genetic data may reshape mental health research and precision medicine.
00:00 Meet the Presidents 00:55 What BAP Does 01:17 Bridging Lab to Clinic 02:47 Lived Experience Voices 06:08 BAP Guidelines Explained 07:03 Getting Guidance to Clinics 08:30 Supporting Early Careers 09:11 Pipeline Challenges 10:57 Handover and Strategy 12:39 Global Pressures and Hope
Find out more about the 2026 Summer Meeting of the British Association of Psychopharmacology to be held at the University of Birmingham, 19th-22nd July. https://www.bap.org.uk/summermeetinghome.php?meetingID=19
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Mental Elf
Professor Eileen Joyce and Professor Trevor Robbins, two of her closest colleagues and former PhD students, join André Tomlin to remember Professor Susan (Sue) Iversen (1940–2025), the scientist who fused psychopharmacology and neuropsychology and helped found the field of neuropsychopharmacology.
Depression is not one thing, and treating it as if it were may be why so many people don't get better. In this episode, Prof Brenda Penninx offers a sharper way to think about it.
Oxford psychologist Dr Lucy Foulkes discusses myths and research around adolescent mental health ahead of her public lecture at the British Association of Psychopharmacology Conference (Sunday, 19 July).
Five years of research. 14,000 students surveyed. Interventions tested. A whole-university framework developed. Now: what needs to change?
The Nurture-U Compassionate Campus framework identifies three pillars: culture, communication, and community. What does that mean in practice? How do mitigating circumstances systems end up failing the students who need them most? And is it really as simple as putting benches inside buildings?