Dr Amanda Bye is a Translational Research Fellow for the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People, based in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.

Her research focuses on youth mental health and digital technology use, maternal mental health and health services research. She has a keen interest in participatory research methods and is committed to engaging with stakeholders at every stage in the research lifecycle.

Dr Bye is facilitating a new initiative as part of the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Children and Young People to strengthen the translational pathway between research and clinical practice to promote child and adolescent mental health, including strategy development and stakeholder engagement. She is also Project Manager for a novel prospective cohort study investigating the impact of social media and smartphone use on youth mental health and self-harm - the Social Media, Smartphone Use and Self-Harm In Young People (3S-YP) study (CI, Dr Rina Dutta), funded by the Medical Research Council and Medical Research Foundation. She is leading on several components, including the qualitative analysis, process evaluation and co-production with YoungMinds, the leading UK youth mental health charity.

Dr Bye undertook her PhD at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health under the supervision of Profs Nadia Micali, Jill Shawe and Paul Robinson. Her doctoral research was a multi-method study exploring the challenges of identifying and managing pregnant and postnatal women with eating disorders in maternity and health visiting services. The findings of which led to a project with Dr Abigail Easter and several leading UK charities to co-produce free web-based training on eating disorders for clinicians caring for pregnant and postnatal women. The project was supported by The Health Foundation and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration South London (NIHR ARC South London).

Research interests:

• Adolescent Mental Health
• Digital Technology Use
• Self-harm
• Participatory Research
• Perinatal Mental Health
• Eating Disorders

Teaching:

Dr Bye is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has supervised iBSc, MRES and MSc student research projects at King’s College London and University College London. She has taught on BSc and MSc courses at King’s College London and the University of Surrey.

Expertise and public engagement

Amanda collaborated on a project with Dr Abigail Easter to co-produce web-based training on eating disorders for health professionals caring for pregnant and postnatal women. The project involved women with lived experience, health professionals, voluntary organisations and healthcare partners. For further information and to access the training, please visit the project website.