Angharad De Cates

I am a clinical DPhil student funded by the Wellcome Trust and supervised by Professor Catherine Harmer, Professor Philip Cowen, and Dr Susannah Murphy. 

My research interests include mood disorders and self-harm, neurocognition and psychopharmacology.

Current drug treatments for depression are often poorly tolerated with unacceptable side effects, and may be ineffective at treating low mood for certain individuals. Early work indicates that there are possible newer agents that may work more quickly with fewer side effects, and may help those who have not had a response with previous antidepressants or who are have residual cognitive problems. 

For my DPhil, I plan to look at whether one group of these new agents, which act as agonists at the 5HT4 receptor, may work as antidepressants in humans using an experimental model process. To do this, we will examine neurocognitive markers of brain function (such as emotional processing, memory, and cognition), which have been measured using behavioural tasks and brain imaging.

I am a Specialty Registrar in General Adult Psychiatry and am a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

I also co-chair the Family Friendly and Part-Time working group and sit on the Athena Swan Committee within the department, and am a trainee editor for the BJPsych.