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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 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

Selected publications

A Roach, S Bennett, I Heyman, A Coughtrey, N Batura, L Gonzalez,   BMC Health Services Research 2025 25 (1), 546 

SD Bennett, JH Cross, K Chowdhury, T Ford, I Heyman, AE Coughtrey, ...The Lancet 2024 403 (10433), 1254-1266 

I Heyman. , Archives of Disease in Childhood 2024 109 (10), 781-782 

L Panagi, SR White, SM Pinto Pereira, MD Nugawela, I Heyman, .... PLoS Medicine 2024 21 (1), e1004315 

H Clarke, W Morris, M Catanzano, S Bennett, AE Coughtrey, I Heyman, .... BMC Health Services Research 2022 22 (1), 518 

T Stephenson, SMP Pereira, R Shafran, BL De Stavola, N Rojas, .. . The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health 2022 6 (4), 230-239 

I Heyman, H Liang, T Hedderly.

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, ... . The Lancet Psychiatry 2021 8 (10), 871-882 

M Catanzano, SD Bennett, E Kerry, H Liang, I Heyman, AE Coughtrey, BMJ Ment Health 2021 24 (1), 25-32 

A McWilliams, C Reilly, J Gupta, M Hadji-Michael, R Srinivasan, I Heyman. . Seizure 2019 73, 51-55 

SD Bennett, P Cuijpers, DD Ebert, MMK Smith, AE Coughtrey, I Heyman, ... Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 2019  60(8):828-847 

A McWilliams, C Reilly, FA McFarlane, E Booker, I Heyman. . 2016 Epilepsy & Behavior 59, 128-136 

S Bennett, R Shafran, A Coughtrey, S Walker, I Heyman . Archives of disease in childhood 2015 100 (4), 308-316 

S Davies, I Heyman, R Goodman .  Developmental medicine and child neurology 2003 45 (5), 292-295 

I Heyman, E Fombonne, H Simmons, T Ford, H Meltzer, R Goodman. . The British Journal of Psychiatry 2001 179 (4), 324-329