Dr. Helen Fisher

Helen Fisher is an MRC Population Health Scientist and Lecturer within the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. She is a chartered research psychologist and completed her ESRC/MRC interdisciplinary PhD in 2009 on the role of childhood maltreatment in the onset of psychotic disorders. She then undertook an MRC/ESRC interdisciplinary fellowship to examine interactions between childhood adversity and genes in the development of psychosis and depression. Helen is now extending this work to explore the interplay between childhood trauma and genetic susceptibility in the persistence of psychotic symptoms across the life-course, utilising several population-based longitudinal birth cohorts, as well as the long-term impact on clinical course of psychosis and functioning, using a 10-year follow-up of first-episode psychosis cases. She is also involved in a multi-site European study of the role of childhood and adulthood adversity in the aetiology of psychotic disorders (EU-GEI) with a specific focus on the development of comprehensive assessment tools and their comparability with standardised questionnaire measures and electronic healthcare records. Additionally, Helen is a research consultant for the National Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) charity and provides input into evaluations of interventions for victimised children as well as a large prevalence study of children’s and young people’s victimisation across the UK.