After completing my undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Exeter in 2006, I moved to Cambridge and began working with adults with intellectual disabilities as a support worker. This experience fuelled an interest in the intersection between mental health problems and ID, and I went on to do a masters degree at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, in Mental Health in Intellectual Disabilities. This degree formed the basis for my first RA post at the University of Cambridge, working with Professor Tony Holland in the Cambridge Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Researgh Group (CIDDRG) on a project investigating the overlap between the genetics of autism spectrum disorders and psychotic illnesses. The early pilot work in this area led to a PhD, which I completed in early 2014.

I am now working as a research associate helping Professor Chris Hatton to set up the BEAT-IT trial in Cumbria and Lancashire. BEAT-IT is a multi-centre RCT designed to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioural activation therapy for treating depression in people with intellectual disabilities. You can read more about the trial here. I will be at Lancaster University through the summer of 2014, before going on to take up a place on the University of Birmingham's clinical psychology doctorate programme in the autumn.