Faculty Member, School of Medicine
About
Dr Paul Anthony Keedwell BSc MB ChB MRCPSych
Psychologist Psychiatrist Lecturer Writer Journalist/Communicator
I trained in medicine and psychology at Leeds University where I took an active interest in student journalism and theatre. After doing some work on how television viewing habits in children mediate psychological development with Professor Brent Waters in Sydney I returned to Leeds to train as a Psychiatrist in 1993. I moved to the Maudsley and Insitute of Psychiatry in London in 1996 to finish my psychiatry training and get more involved in research in to the biology of mood disorders and addiction.
I obtained membership of the Royal Collage of Psychiatrists in 1998 and then completed my higher training on a part time basis, leaving time for writing.
In 2003 I was appointed lecturer in the Neuroscience of Emotion at the Insitute of Psychiatry and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley hospital. I also became a member of the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the British Association of Psychopharmacology and registered for a PhD. I ran a specialist mood disorders clinic while conducting research in to how the brain regulates emotion and what goes wrong in mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder.
My book How Sadness Survived was published in February 2008 - a unique examination of depression from an evolutionary perspective, aimed at the general reader. I continue to try to engage people with neuroscience and mental health issues. I have a website for this purpose at drkeedwell.com.
On 1 April 2008 I was appointed Clinical Lecturer in the Neurobiology of Mood Disorders at Cardiff University - a world leading centre examining the genetics of mental illness and degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease. I also continue to enjoy Visiting Lecturer status at the Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London.
I enjoy research collaborations in Cardiff, London, Bangor and Bristol.
My main research interests are as follows:
1. An examination of how the brain regulates mood and how this goes wrong in major depression and bipolar disorder
2. Ketamine, GABA, glutamate and psychiatric disorder.
3. What happens to the brain when people recover from depression.
4. Evolutionary psychology as applied to emotion and depression.
5. How people vary in the way they experience pleasure and how this relates to depression.
6. Imaging genomics - an exploration of how genes affect our brain function.
7. Evolutionary and environmental psychology.
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