Institute of Psychiatry

The Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) is a school of King’s College London. The people who work there carry out research to find out more about mental health problems and diseases of the brain in order to develop better treatments and services. They also teach on a wide range of postgraduate courses about research and mental health.

The IoP is based in Camberwell in south London, next to the Maudsley Hospital, which is run by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM). Many of the researchers at the IoP also work as mental health professionals in services run by SLaM and the two organisations work very closely together.

A large number of IoP researchers are investigating psychosis. There is a 'Psychosis Clinical Academic Group' (CAG), which includes IoP researchers and mental health professionals working in SLaM services for people with psychosis. The structure of the CAG allows mental health professionals to find out about the latest research results and use them in their everyday work. It also allows researchers to plan projects, trials and teaching programmes that are relevant to, and likely to improve, services.

A specialist ‘Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health’ (BRC) is jointly run by the IoP and SLaM with funding from the government’s National Institute for Health Research. The Centre carries out ‘translational’ research – this means researchers aim to 'translate' scientific discoveries into new treatments for people with mental health problems. The BRC carries out a lot of research into psychosis. To find out more, visit the Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health web pages.

There are downloadable 'plain English' summaries of some of the research carried out by researchers at the IoP on relevant pages of this website. You can access all downloads at the Research downloads page.