Biography

Professor Shoumitro (Shoumi) Deb, MBBS, FRCPsych, MD (s.deb@imperial.ac.uk), is a Visiting Clinical Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine, Division of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London, UK. Previously, he was a full-time substantive Clinical Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University of Birmingham and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at Cardiff University and the University of Aberdeen. His research interests include neuropsychiatry of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), particularly apathy syndrome and aggressive behaviour following traumatic brain injury (TBI). His other research interests are epilepsy and intellectual disabilities (ID), dementia and Down's syndrome. His current work is on the psychopharmacology of aggression in people with TBI and adult neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). He has also done some preliminary work on advanced neuroimaging (VBM, DTI, fMRI, EEG-fMRI, MRS, etc.), particularly in the context of social cognitive impairment in TBI. He has over 400 publications, including 12 books and over 65 book chapters and made over 250 presentations at national and international conferences (including keynote speeches and chairing of sessions). His citation index is 10146, the h-index is 52, and the i10 index is 151 (14.03.25). He has received research funding from the UK Department of Health, NIHR, the Welsh Office of R&D, the Wellcome Trust, other charities, the Department of Health, the Government of Australia, the Victoria Government of Australia, and the National Institute of Mental Health (Bethesda, USA). He led a research and teaching team of over 20 members at the University of Birmingham. He was the Programme Director for the MSc course on Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University and the MSc in Epilepsy at the University of Birmingham. He was also the module coordinator for the MSc in Neuropsychiatry and Intellectual Disabilities at the University of Birmingham. His research has always involved patients and their caregivers from the outset, helped improve their quality of life, improved services for patients and carers, and has been used as evidence in the UK NICE guidelines and NIHR.

His seminal work includes (a) the first-ever comprehensive neuropsychiatric outcome study of adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) (AJP, 1999) https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.156.3.374, (b) patient and carer-determined outcome measures including neurobehavioral and neurocognitive assessments for patients with TBI and their carers/caregivers (HIPS + HINAS and CHIPS + CHINAS) (NDT, 2007) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2147/ndt.s12160185, (c) the only published RCT (feasibility) on risperidone versus placebo to treat aggression in adults with TBI (BMJO, 2020) https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-036300, (d) lead of national and international guidelines on the use of psychotropic medications in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) for behaviours that challenge (World Psychiatry, 2009) https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2051-5545.2009.tb00248.x, (e) the first-ever comprehensive assessment of psychopathology in adults with ID and epilepsy (BJP, 1991) https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.159.6.822, (f) the first ever comprehensive assessment of psychiatric disorders in adults with ID (JIDR, 2001) https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2788.2001.00374.x, (g) a dementia screening questionnaire for adults with ID (DSQIID) translated into more than 24 languages and validated for worldwide use (BJP, 2007) https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.106.024984, (h) the first-ever freely available online accessible (easy read) psychotropic medication information leaflets http://www.ld-medication.bham.ac.uk, (i) the first-ever European Guideline (and recent update in EJP, 2022) on the assessment and diagnosis of psychiatric disorders in adults with ID https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpsy.2021.10.002, (j) the first-ever online training, SPECTROM for caregivers to help reduce the overmedication of people with ID https://spectrom.wixsite.com/project, (k) the first-ever evidence-based practice guidelines for ID in the UK NHS.