No Panic's President
Professor Kevin Gourney CBE FRCPsych (Hon) FMedSci FRCN AFBPsS CPsychol PhD RN
WEB LINK : Institute of Psychiatry at The Maudsley
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Professor Gournay is a Chartered Psychologist and a Registered Nurse. He is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry; Kings College London. This institution ranks as having the highest impact on healthcare research of any in the world.
Clinical Expertise
Over nearly three decades, Professor Gournay has had extensive clinical experience in the psychological treatment of a range of anxiety disorders. He has mainly focussed on treating people with panic, phobias and obsessive compulsive disorders. He also has considerable experience in treating adult and child victims of post traumatic stress. He has been responsible for the assessment and treatment of people from a range of traumatic events, including various major disasters and a whole range of domestic, industrial and road traffic accidents and other trauma, including crime and war related events. He also has considerable experience of treating people with various physical illnesses for their psychological problems (e.g. cancer, heart disease) and behavioural medicine (e.g. the management of high blood pressure by psychological methods, helping patients cope with the side effects of chemotherapy). In the past 10 years Professor Gournay has also developed expertise in the psychological treatment of depression and schizophrenia. His treatment method is principally cognitive behaviour therapy in which he is fully accredited as a therapist.
Research and Teaching
Professor Gournay has held major research grants, over a period of 23 years, notably in the cognitive behavioural treatment of phobic anxiety, body image disorders, the use of medication, epidemiology, health economics and community mental health. At the present time, he has personal responsibility for 17 research projects and he is the author of approximately 300 journal articles, conference papers (national and international), books, book chapters and reports .He published a textbook on agoraphobia in 1989 and has published widely on anxiety disorders..
Professor Gournay set up and ran the country's first multidisciplinary Masters programme for mental health professionals in the area of interventions for serious mental illness. He has had attachments to the University of New South Wales in Sydney, in Boulder Colorado, and the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, where he has taught on the subjects of post traumatic stress and the management of severe mental illness. He directs a number of training programmes for mental health professionals (doctors, psychologists and nurses) and his experience includes teaching in a number of countries including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic Russia, Eire and several other European countries.
Expert Witness
He is an Expert Witness on the Law Society List in post traumatic stress disorder and standards of care, particularly relating to suicides and homicides by people with mental illness. He has provided hundreds of expert reports to courts, public inquiries and select committees in England, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Miscellaneous
Over the years he has had involvement with various charities and voluntary organisations other than No Panic, but involvement with No Panic is his most cherished activity outside of his conventional “work”. . He has extensive experience in journalism and the media and has appeared on numerous TV and radio programmes in the UK and in other countries, notably Australia. He has had numerous appointments to government bodies, including the Prison Mental health task force, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, and various Department of Health committees. He has provided advice on health topics to ministers and 3 Secretaries of State for Health since 1994.
He has been elected to Fellowships of the Academy of Medical
Sciences for his distinguished services to Medical Science, to
the Royal College of Psychiatrists for his outstanding
contribution to Psychiatry and to the Royal College of Nursing
for his contribution to Psychiatric Nursing. He was appointed
CBE in the New Year Honours 1998/1999.