Biography
Melanie Abas is Professor of Global Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London and Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. She was appointed Director of the King’s Global Health Institute in 2023.
Her research focus as a psychiatric epidemiologist is development and clinical trials of therapies for depression in underserved populations which can be delivered through primary health care, and building research capacity in groups under-represented in academia.
She is known for research which built conclusive evidence that a low-cost talking therapy, the ‘Friendship Bench’, originating from Zimbabwe, significantly reduces depression. This African innovation has had global impact, including in the US and UK.
Melanie is also recognised for research with the PROTECT team which underpinned UK policy changes and new NHS training, enabling better health and safeguarding for UK survivors of human trafficking.
At King's, Melanie leads the research group ‘Therapies in Global Mental Health”, and a research team called Connecting HIV and Mental Health (CHARM). Through listening and allying with partners from the global south, these teams have produced regionally relevant research evidence which has changed policy, improving equity to mental and behavioural healthcare.
Melanie’s portfolio of projects includes development and testing of a new intervention called TENDAI (Therapy for Adherence+Depression). TENDAI combines active ingredients to treat depression and improve adherence to medication for people living with HIV, and potentially other chronic conditions, With the founder of the Friendship Bench, Prof Dixon Chibanda, Melanie co-directs African Youth in Mind, adapting the Friendship Bench for youth.
Her work has been characterised by working through equitable partnerships with global south researchers and research capacity building for groups traditionally under-represented in academia. She has worked on African-led capacity building programs since 2010 including the US-African Medical Education Partnership Initiative across 13 African medical schools 2010 – 2019.
Melanie is the King's College London partner for the African Mental Health Research Initiative (2016 – 2022; 2023 - 2027) which is led from the University of Zimbabwe as part of the Science Foundation for Africa 'Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science Initiative', supported by the Wellcome Trust.
Melanie completed her medical training at the University of Birmingham before receiving her MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and her doctorate from the University of Auckland.
Melanie’s early research funded by the MacArthur Foundation was on the social origins of depression in women in Zimbabwe. This was the first to show a common mechanism for the development of depression cross-culturally through the experience of life events involving humiliation and loss.
Research interests
- Cultural adaptation and Clinical Trials of scalable interventions for depression and other common mental disorders deliverable by non-specialists in low-resource settings.
- Research at the interface between mental health and priorities for the global south including women’s health, education, and ending the HIV epidemic.
- Early intervention and remission of depression in low-resource settings
- Behavioural interventions to improve adherence to treatment for long-term conditions, especially HIV.
- Equitable research partnerships between the global north and the global south; decolonisation and research fairness.
- Research capacity-building.
Teaching
Melanie regularly teaches and supervises students on topics related to Global Mental Health including: cross cultural measurement, psychiatric epidemiology, development and adaptation of interventions for depression and anxiety, aspects of depression in low and middle income countries, grant writing, scaling up mental health services, ethics of research in low resource settings, on the following courses:
MSc in Global Mental Health
MSc in Affective Disorders
BSc in Neuroscience
MSc in Mental Health Studies
Expertise and public engagement
Melanie is a member of the Wellcome Trust Populations and Public Health Advisory board, and a faculty member of the UK MRC Applied Global Health Board.
She is scientific advisor to the University of Washington, Behavioral Research Center for HIV and an editor on the International Editorial Board of the British Journal of Psychiatry. She previously sat on the Wellcome Trust/MRC/DFiD Joint Global Health Trials committee, and on the Wellcome Bloomsbury Tropical Health Policy Group.
Melanie has published articles in Newsweek and in the Association of Commonwealth Universities review; her work has featured in The Guardian and Washington Post and on NPR radio, BBC World Service and CNN news.
Further details
See Melanie's research profile