Dr Lindsay H. Dewa

Summary

Lindsay is an Advanced Research Fellow in Mental Health within the School of Public Health and the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI). She is also an Honorary Research Psychologist at West London NHS Trust. She works across the clinical and public mental health interface, and leads projects examining patient safety in mental health, particularly in young people. Her work primarily focuses on preventing and detecting youth mental health deterioration using digital devices and lifestyle factors such as sleep and social connection. Other work centres on suicide prevention, self-harm and care transitions in vulnerable and seldom-heard groups. She is also an Imperial Mental Health Research Network steering group original member, and co-chair of IGHI's mental health and wellbeing working group.

Co-production in mental health

Lindsay's work embeds co-production and/or meaningful patient and public involvement (PPI). This usually means working together with people with lived experience of mental health difficulties throughout the research process - from prioritisation and design to dissemination. Her latest work is co-produced with young people with experience of psychiatric inpatient care, looking at the relationship between sleep and suicide following discharge from a psychiatric inpatient setting. She also examined the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on the mental health and coping strategies of young people which is co-produced with young people with experience of mental health difficulties. She is also leading a qualitative systematic review on this topic. 

Public engagement

Lindsay is actively involved in public engagement projects that feature hear work, including Imperial Lates, Imperial Instagram Live, IGHI blogs, Podcasts, and Imperial's Great Exhibition Road Festival. She also won funding by The National Lottery Fund to increase awareness in young men's mental health through creative media (Fightin' Thru). She was recently sought out by InnerEye Produtions to co-produce a film drama focused on inequalities and young people's mental health during the pandemic (Nexus). Nexus has recently been recognised the British Film Institute, and archived. Her work has also been recognised by local artists in Imperial as part of Great Exhibition Road Festival. She also created a new innovative mini magazine to showcase research findings on mental health in a more accessible way for young people called Future Minds. She also led the Pint of Science 2019 Beautiful Minds session.

Teaching

She was Topic Lead in Mental Health and Wellbeing for the Lifestyle Medicine and Prevention module for MBBS at Imperial 2019-2022. She lectures across BSc Neuroscience and Mental Health, MSc Health Policy and MSc Patient Safety courses, and supervises students across MSc Health Policy, BSc Neuroscience and Mental Health and MSc Public Health.

Background and experience

Lindsay's background is in psychology (BA, MSc) and forensic psychology (MSc). During her PhD, titled: Insomnia in a prison population: a mixed methods study, she studied the prevalence and associated factors of insomnia including depression, suicidality and anxiety in a large cohort of male and female prisoners at The University of Manchester. She subsequently designed and tested a novel treatment pathway for insomnia for prisoners in a high secure prison in England after winning a Health Foundation Innovating for Improvement Award. She has over 15 years research experience that spans across public health, psychology and forensic mental health.

Publications

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