The Mental Elf

Professor Eileen Joyce and Professor Trevor Robbins, two of her closest colleagues and former PhD students, join André Tomlin to remember Professor Susan (Sue) Iversen (1940–2025), the scientist who fused psychopharmacology and neuropsychology and helped found the field of neuropsychopharmacology.

Sue supervised both Eileen's and Trevor's PhDs at Cambridge in the 1970s, went on to lead Behavioural Pharmacology at Merck, became Head of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, served as President of the BAP (1996–98), and was made a CBE for services to medical research. In this conversation, Eileen and Trevor talk about how Sue shaped their science and their careers: her dopamine research, her influence on the dopamine-prefrontal cortex framework, and her mentorship of a generation of scientists, many of them women.

This conversation previews "Remembering Sue Iversen and her contribution to Psychopharmacology," a special session at the BAP Summer Meeting, 19–22 July 2026, University of Birmingham. Full session details: https://bap.org.uk/summersessiondetails.php?meetingID=19&sessionID=790

Guests: Professor Eileen Joyce, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychiatry, Queen Square UCL Institute of Neurology. Professor Trevor Robbins CBE, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Cambridge.

Also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wLpNVZYLTzw
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Depression is not one thing, and treating it as if it were may be why so many people don't get better. In this episode, Prof Brenda Penninx offers a sharper way to think about it.

Recorded ahead of her guest lecture at the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) Summer Meeting, Brenda talks to André Tomlin (The Mental Elf) about "immuno-metabolic depression": the 20–30% of depressed patients who show low-grade inflammation and metabolic dysregulation, clustered with atypical, energy-related symptoms such as fatigue, oversleeping, increased appetite and leaden paralysis. Drawing on the large Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA), she explains why these patients respond slightly less well to standard antidepressants, and why that matters.

00:00 Meet Brenda Penninx
01:03 Why Depression Varies
03:03 Defining Immunometabolic Depression
04:11 Cause or Vicious Cycle
05:56 Treatment Targets and Trials
07:41 Proof of Concept IL6 Study
10:26 Lifestyle as Medicine
13:19 From Concept to Clinic
15:11 Mind Body Care Gap
16:29 Conference Takeaways

Is the biology a cause or a consequence of depression? Neither, Brenda argues: it's a vicious cycle, with common roots in genetics, lifestyle and childhood adversity. She discusses what this means for treatment (anti-inflammatory drugs, metabolic and lifestyle interventions) and why the key is targeting the right subgroup rather than the whole depressed population. She reflects on the recent Bristol tocilizumab proof-of-concept trial (Foley & Khandaker, JAMA Psychiatry), the Wellcome-funded ASPIRE project bringing these trials together, and why running therapy should be treated as a genuine, supported intervention rather than a slogan.

Finally, the conversation turns to what still stands between concept and clinic (how to identify the right patients, which intervention to choose) and Brenda's wish to bring mental and physical healthcare back together.

About the guest: Prof Brenda Penninx is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at Amsterdam UMC / Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and lead of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA).

Find out more about Brenda Penninx's talk at the 2026 BAP Summer Meeting: https://www.bap.org.uk/summersessiondetails.php?meetingID=19&sessionID=740
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Catherine Harmer, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Oxford and outgoing president of the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP), and Naomi Fineberg, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Hertfordshire and incoming BAP president, discuss how BAP brings together non-clinical scientists, experimental medicine researchers, clinicians, and industry to translate discoveries into patient care.

They explore growing involvement of people with lived experience through a panel shaping council work and the summer meeting, and the need to balance professional and lived-experience perspectives. Fineberg highlights BAP’s evidence-based guidelines, aimed at improving patient outcomes via clinician uptake, and plans to strengthen dissemination through NHS engagement, accessible formats, training, and webinars. They also address support for early career researchers and pipeline challenges, strategy implementation during the presidential handover, and how global stressors and emerging digital and genetic data may reshape mental health research and precision medicine.

00:00 Meet the Presidents
00:55 What BAP Does
01:17 Bridging Lab to Clinic
02:47 Lived Experience Voices
06:08 BAP Guidelines Explained
07:03 Getting Guidance to Clinics
08:30 Supporting Early Careers
09:11 Pipeline Challenges
10:57 Handover and Strategy
12:39 Global Pressures and Hope

Find out more about the 2026 Summer Meeting of the British Association of Psychopharmacology to be held at the University of Birmingham, 19th-22nd July. https://www.bap.org.uk/summermeetinghome.php?meetingID=19

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Oxford psychologist Dr Lucy Foulkes discusses myths and research around adolescent mental health ahead of her public lecture at the British Association of Psychopharmacology Conference (Sunday, 19 July).

She critiques Keir Starmer’s proposal to ban social media for under-16s, arguing bans won’t remove risks, may reduce teens’ willingness to discuss online experiences, and ignore social media’s benefits, especially for marginalised or isolated young people; she supports stronger regulation to make platforms safer.

Foulkes explains her “prevalence inflation” hypothesis: rising reported mental health problems may reflect better recognition, broadened definitions that pathologise normal distress, and a possible third pathway where exposure to mental health content can increase anxiety (including new evidence from Instagram posts, akin to a nocebo effect).

She addresses self-diagnosis as often understandable and frequently accurate, but warns of “concept creep,” shifting meanings, and potential trivialisation that can obscure severe illness, and she emphasizes listening to young people while exploring their reasons and needs.

00:00 Meet Lucy Foulkes
01:00 Social Media Ban Reaction
02:26 Regulation Over Bans
03:29 Benefits and Teen Agency
05:49 Mental Health Awareness Myths
06:18 Prevalence Inflation Explained
09:01 Nocebo and Lessons Backfire
12:00 Why Self Diagnosis Is Rising
15:20 Concept Creep and Costs
17:25 How Clinicians Should Respond
19:40 Next Research Questions
21:18 Public Lecture Invitation

You can watch Dr Foulke's Public lecture on Adolescent mental health: The truth behind the headlines in person or online on 19th July 2026, 17:30 – 19:00. It's part of the BAP Summer Meeting. More details online: https://www.bap.org.uk/summersessiondetails.php?meetingID=19&sessionID=743
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Five years of research. 14,000 students surveyed. Interventions tested. A whole-university framework developed. Now: what needs to change?

In the final episode of the Nurture-U Podcast, researchers, university leaders and students reflect on what it will take to turn evidence into action. What are universities actually responsible for? How do we scale what works? And what do students need most?

Three things universities can do right now:
Lead from the top — make student mental health a board-level priority, not just a departmental one
Prevention, prevention, prevention — build mental health literacy into induction and the curriculum
Work with students — if it doesn't meet their needs, you are wasting your time

Featuring Professor Ed Watkins (Nurture-U PI, University of Exeter), Professor Sir Steve West (Vice Chancellor, UWE), Dr Jane Harris (University of Oxford), Kate Wicklow (GuildHE), Yanting Sun and Rida Ali. Presented by André Tomlin, The Mental Elf.

Find all four episodes and access all Nurture-U resources at https://www.nurtureuniversity.co.uk

Nurture-U is funded by the Medical Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council.
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