Dasha Nicholls is Clinical Reader in Child Psychiatry at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at CNWL. Dasha moved to Imperial College in 2018 after more than 20 years at Great Ormond Street Hospital where she co-led the National Feeding and Eating Disorders Service. She leads the Child and Adolescent Mental Health research team in the Division of Psychiatry, and is Deputy Lead of the Division. Dasha is the lead for Multimorbidity within the North West London Applied Research Collaboration (ARC), and lead for Mental Health. She oversees the CNWL training academy for CAMHS and Eating Disorders.

After qualifying in Medicine in 1988 she started training in Psychiatry in Eastbourne, before moving to UCL and then onto Great Ormond Street for higher training in Child Psychiatry. She is past chair of the Eating Disorders Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Past President of the Academy of Eating Disorders. She led development of national guidelines for the management of seriously ill young people with anorexia nervosa, and has served on the NICE guideline committee for eating disorders and other national bodies to improve care and services for people with eating disorders. Dasha also co-founded the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Surveillance System (CAPSS) for research into rare disorders and events in child mental health.

Research interests include:

  • Social, psychological and biological risk factors for eating disorders
  • Prevention and early intervention for disordered eating behaviour in young people
  • The impact of social media on mental health
  • The relationship between physical and mental health in young people

Recent publications (5 max):

 

  1. Byford S, Petkova H, Stuart R, Nicholls D, Simic M, Ford T, Macdonald G, Gowers S, Roberts S, Barrett B, Kelly J, Kelly G, Livingstone N, Joshi K, Smith H, Eisler I. Alternative community-based models of care for young people with anorexia nervosa: the CostED national surveillance study. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2019.
  2. Neale J, Pais SMA, Nicholls D, Chapman S, Hudson LD. What Are the Effects of Restrictive Eating Disorders on Growth and Puberty and Are Effects Permanent? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. J Adolesc Health. 2019 Nov 23. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.08.032.
  3. Petkova H, Ford T, Nicholls D, Stuart R, Livingstone N, Kelly G, Simic M, Eisler I, Gowers S, Macdonald G, Barrett B, Byford S. Incidence of anorexia nervosa in young people in the British Isles. BMJ Open 2019 Oct 22;9(10)
  4. Viner RM, Aswathikutty-Gireesh A, Stiglic N, Hudson LD, Goddings AL, Ward JL, Nicholls DE. Roles of cyberbullying, sleep, and physical activity in mediating the effects of social media use on mental health and wellbeing among young people in England: a secondary analysis of longitudinal data. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2019 Oct;3(10):685-696.
  5. Nicholls D, Becker A. Food for Thought: Bringing Eating Disorders out of the shadows. BJPsych 2019 Jul 26:1-2.

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