Dr Emmanuelle Peters receives British Psychological Society award
Dr Emmanuelle Peters, Reader of Clinical Psychology in the IoPPN Psychology Department, has been awarded the British Psychological Society’s Professional Practice Board’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Practice. The award is made each year to a psychologist who has made an outstanding contribution to professional practice in the UK.
Dr Peters is director of the Psychology Interventions Clinic for Outpatients with Psychosis (PICuP) at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM). The British Psychological Society’s award recognises how Dr Peters has used her research skills to allow the clinic to evaluate the work it does and ensure it is delivering the best care possible. She continues to work in line with a scientist-practitioner model, contributing to the evidence base by sharing real world outcomes from a real life clinical service.
Of her award, Dr Peters said, ‘I am extraordinarily proud of the work we do in PICuP and of all the people who work there, many of whom worked with me as trainees and came back to stay. They are the most talented, devoted group of clinical psychologists you could ever hope for – it is a privilege to lead a team with such deep commitment to helping people with psychosis and a sense of shared values.
‘I have been lucky to have had incredibly inspiring role-models and mentors, particularly Professors Philippa Garety and Elizabeth Kuipers, who have shaped my career and provided me with a template of the kind of clinical psychologist I wanted to be. It has been a great honour to follow in their foot-steps and play a role in the delivery of psychological interventions for psychosis.’
Professor Dame Til Wykes, Vice-Dean of Psychology & Systems Sciences, said, ‘The IoPPN is known for growing clinician-scientists who make a big impact on our academic life as well as the health services. Emmanuelle is a fantastic exemplar of how we can implement our research evidence into the NHS to give our service users the best chance of recovery. Her award is really well deserved.’
Dr Peters founded PICuP with Professor Elizabeth Kuipers in 1999. It has an international reputation as one of the few entirely psychology-led services for psychosis in the UK. PICuP provides National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) adherent psychological therapies and has won many awards including a Service User Involvement award and four internal SLaM awards, and it was a finalist for two prestigious Health Service Journal awards this year.
Dr Peters has specialised as a clinician, researcher and trainer in psychosis for the last 20 years. In 2003, she was awarded the May Davidson Award from the British Psychological Society for ‘outstanding contribution to the development of clinical psychology within the first 10 years of qualification’. She was also joint winner of the IoPPN, and overall KCL winner, of the 2016/17 Supervisory Excellence Award.