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Staff Profiles

Professor Claire Lomax

Director of the Psychological Therapies Training and Research Unit (PTTRU)

  • Email: claire.lomax@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Psychology,
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Background

I trained as a clinical psychologist in 2005 at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IOPPN) at King's College London in 2005. Before this I undertook a PhD also at IOPPN looking at the impact of neurodegenerative disease on patients and their caregivers. Since then I have had NHS posts working with adults and children with anxiety disorders, with my main areas of clinical and research experience being with OCD and Hoarding Disorder. I worked for 3 years on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) programme at the University of Bath as Senior Research Tutor and took up the post of Programme Director in 2017 for the DClinPsy programme at Newcastle University.


Current role

As Director of the Psychological Therapies Training and Research Unit, I lead and manage the psychological professions training programmes within the School of Psychology. These provide an excellent educational experience for students who will become the NHS workforce in mental health services within our region. Alongside management of the psychological professions programmes, I am also Clinic Director of the Newcastle University Psychological Therapies Research and Training Clinic, a clinical service which provides our students with an on-site and accessible service to access CBT, the only NICE recommended evidence-based talking therapy treatment for anxiety and depression. The clinic also provides clinical placements for our trainee psychologists, increasing our training capacity and supporting the long-term NHS workforce plan.


I am part of the Board of the Clearing House for Postgraduate Courses in Clinical Psychology. Clearing House (CH) is registered as a non-profit educational charity and works with programmes to provide a single point of application, processing a high volume of applications (5,800 in 2024). It also collects and reports on monitoring statistics e.g. equal opportunities data to inform and facilitate EDI work and graduate employment data for commissioners. A key remit of the charity is to further the profession of Clinical Psychology, and we seek to synergise with training community and NHS requirements, including supporting workforce planning. 


I work clinically using CBT and specialise in treating OCD. I supervise postgraduate and undergraduate research and publish in the areas of Hoarding Disorder and CBT.


Research

My highest impact paper was written with Naguib et al. (2009) which was a meta-analysis of the neuro-cognitive performance in children with type 1 diabetes. This has been a highly influential paper have been cited 214 times, received 2,619 views and 1,246 downloads.

 

However, the majority of my publications as with a great deal of applied psychology literature are practitioner focused and contribute to understanding clinical practice and developing theoretical/clinical models. Examples include a paper I published on subtypes of OCD (early and late onset) has been cited 58 times, discussed at practitioner and service-user conferences, and has contributed to practice and conversation as to whether there should be differences in the treatment of OCD for different subgroups of sufferers.

 

I have published three further papers investigating the presentation and treatment of anxiety disorders. A review on the assessment, development and treatment of childhood perfectionism has been cited 88 times and has fed into treatment work and new models of perfectionism. Two papers on the role of tolerance of uncertainty have been cited 55 times and contribute to models of understanding anxiety and treatment protocols. My research is very practitioner focused and aimed at improving models of understanding and therefore enhancing treatment.

Teaching

I teach across all of the psychological profession programmes on my areas of specialism which are OCD and related disorders. I contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes in areas of professional clinical practice.

Publications