Professor Isobel Heyman

Degrees

• BSc
• MBBS
• PhD
• FRCPsych 

Research Interests 

Clinical and applied mental health  

Biography 

Professor Isobel Heyman is a consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist.  She is clinical co-lead for Cambridge Children’s Hospital development project – a new hospital which will for the first time fully integrate physical and mental health care.  

She and her teams see some of the most unwell children each week, in her clinics in Cambridge and London. Dr Heyman founded the UK’s first specialist clinic for young people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and also has extensive expertise in developmental neuropsychiatry, Tourette syndrome, epilepsy and persistent physical symptoms.  

She has worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, the Institute of Child Health, University College London, the Institute of Psychiatry and Maudsley Hospital. 

Her research, clinical practice, teaching, leadership and strategic advice are recognised nationally and internationally.  She is active in public communication of medicine and science, and has contributed widely to media contributions on mental health.  Expertise includes neuropsychiatry, integrating physical and mental health, epilepsy, Tourette Syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder and enhancing care of children and families in all of these areas. Most recently her research has focussed on detecting and treating mental ill-health in children with long term physical illness. She has over 300 publications and over 10000 citations. 

She received UK Royal College of Psychiatrists ‘Psychiatrist of the Year’ award in 2015, her Psychological Medicine Team at GOSH was awarded CAMHS team of the year 2018,  and her drop-in mental health project won British Medical Journal ‘Mental Health Team of the Year’ award in 2021 for developing and evaluating a novel drop-in mental health service – the ‘Lucy booth’. She was awarded an MBE in 2023 for Services to Child and Adolescent Mental Health 

For a full list of publications please see Isobel’s webpage on Google Scholar

Selected publications

A Roach, S Bennett, I Heyman, A Coughtrey, N Batura, L Gonzalez, Clinical effectiveness of drop-in mental health services in paediatric healthcare settings: a non-randomised multi-site study for children, young people and their families  BMC Health Services Research 2025 25 (1), 546 

SD Bennett, JH Cross, K Chowdhury, T Ford, I Heyman, AE Coughtrey, ...Clinical effectiveness of the psychological therapy Mental Health Intervention for Children with Epilepsy in addition to usual care compared with assessment-enhanced usual care …The Lancet 2024 403 (10433), 1254-1266 

I Heyman. Physical health and mental healthcare: each has its own evidence base but they need to be integrated, Archives of Disease in Childhood 2024 109 (10), 781-782 

L Panagi, SR White, SM Pinto Pereira, MD Nugawela, I Heyman, ...Mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal analysis of the CLoCk cohort study. PLoS Medicine 2024 21 (1), e1004315 

H Clarke, W Morris, M Catanzano, S Bennett, AE Coughtrey, I Heyman, ...Cost-effectiveness of a mental health drop-in centre for young people with long-term physical conditions. BMC Health Services Research 2022 22 (1), 518 

T Stephenson, SMP Pereira, R Shafran, BL De Stavola, N Rojas, .. Physical and mental health 3 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection (long COVID) among adolescents in England (CLoCk): a national matched cohort study. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health 2022 6 (4), 230-239 

I Heyman, H Liang, T Hedderly. COVID-19 related increase in childhood tics and tic-like attacks

Archives of Disease in Childhood 2021 106 (5), 420-42 

.C Hollis, CL Hall, R Jones, L Marston, M Le Novere, R Hunter, BJ Brown, ... Therapist-supported online remote behavioural intervention for tics in children and adolescents in England (ORBIT): a multicentre, parallel group, single-blind, randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Psychiatry 2021 8 (10), 871-882 

M Catanzano, SD Bennett, E Kerry, H Liang, I Heyman, AE Coughtrey, Evaluation of a mental health drop-in centre offering brief transdiagnostic psychological assessment and treatment for children and adolescents with long-term physical …BMJ Ment Health 2021 24 (1), 25-32 

A McWilliams, C Reilly, J Gupta, M Hadji-Michael, R Srinivasan, I Heyman. Autism spectrum disorder in children and young people with non-epileptic seizures. Seizure 2019 73, 51-55 

SD Bennett, P Cuijpers, DD Ebert, MMK Smith, AE Coughtrey, I Heyman, ...Unguided and Guided Self-Help Interventions for Common Mental Health Disorders in Children and Adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 2019  60(8):828-847 

A McWilliams, C Reilly, FA McFarlane, E Booker, I Heyman. Nonepileptic seizures in the pediatric population: A qualitative study of patient and family experiences. 2016 Epilepsy & Behavior 59, 128-136 

S Bennett, R Shafran, A Coughtrey, S Walker, I Heyman Psychological interventions for mental health disorders in children with chronic physical illness: a systematic review. Archives of disease in childhood 2015 100 (4), 308-316 

S Davies, I Heyman, R Goodman A population survey of mental health problems in children with epilepsy.  Developmental medicine and child neurology 2003 45 (5), 292-295 

I Heyman, E Fombonne, H Simmons, T Ford, H Meltzer, R Goodman. Prevalence of obsessive–compulsive disorder in the British nationwide survey of child mental health. The British Journal of Psychiatry 2001 179 (4), 324-329