Dr Camilla Parker (née Selous)

Profile

I am a clinical academic psychiatrist at the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health.

I studied medicine at the University of Cardiff where I obtained an Intercalated BSc in Psychological Medicine with First Class Honours and was awarded a Royal College of Psychiatrists Pathfinder Fellowship. After finishing my foundation years on the Academic Foundation Programme at Queen Mary University of London and Barts NHS Trust, I worked at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust before returning to East London to start my core psychiatry training and take up an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship.

My research uses big data and mixed methodologies to understand the impact adverse childhood experiences on mental health outcomes across the life course. Negative outcomes after childhood adversity are not inevitable and I am particularly interested in positive adaptation in spite of experiences of childhood adversity and identifying and harnessing psychosocial protective factors with the potential to alter negative developmental trajectories.

I am a keen educator and have taught on undergraduate medicine and psychology course at Queen Mary University of London. I pioneered an innovative training programme on Modern Slavery victim identification and safeguarding for healthcare professionals.

Research

Research Interests:

I use big data and mixed methodologies to understand the impact of adverse childhood experiences on mental health outcomes across the life course. My research includes investigating the long-term risk for depression into adulthood after exposure to adverse childhood experiences, and exploring the reliability over time of retrospectively reported child maltreatment in adults with Bipolar Affective Disorder. I am currently undertaking a systematic review of the community-based group exercise for youth with anxiety and depression.

· Principal Investigator for the Remote DIALOG+ study

· Guest-editor for BMC Neuroscience collection on ‘Current evidence on the impact of adverse childhood experiences on the brain’

Publications

Selous C, Kelly-Irving M, Maughan B, Eyre O, Rice F, Collishaw S. Adverse childhood experiences and adult mood problems: evidence from a five-decade prospective birth cohort. Psychological Medicine. 2020;50(14):2444-2451. doi:10.1017/S003329171900271X.

Hosang, G. M., Manoli, A., Shakoor, S., Fisher, H. L., & Parker, C. (2023). Reliability and convergent validity of retrospective reports of childhood maltreatment by individuals with bipolar disorder. Psychiatry Research, 321, 115105. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115105.

Metcalf EP, Selous C. Modern slavery response and recognition training. Clin Teach. 2020 Feb;17(1):47-51. doi: 10.1111/tct.13011. Epub 2019 Mar 5. PMID: 30835966.