Melanie Abas

Melanie Amna Abas is Professor of Global Mental Health at King’s College London, consultant psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and Co-Chair of the King’s College London African Regional Network. Melanie is a psychiatrist and epidemiologist. She co-founded the world’s first Masters in Global Mental Health at King’s College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is Co-Director of Youth in Mind – a UK National Institute for Health Global Health Research Group for research on interventions for depression and anxiety in youth in African countries. She is Chief Investigator for an R01 Clinical Trial called TENDAI, to treat depression and improve viral suppression in people living with HIV in Zimbabwe.

Melanie has worked on African-led capacity building programs since 2010 including the US-funded Medical Education Partnership Initiative and the African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI) funded through the Wellcome Trust’s program on Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science (DELTAS). Research interests are cultural adaptation and clinical trials of treatments for depression and anxiety which are feasible for delivery in low-resource settings, and mental health research at the interface with key priorities for the global south, including HIV, maternal health, and youth development. Her research vision is to move into understanding how to predict what existing treatments in the low-resource settings works best for whom, and how to ensure fidelity of task-shifted interventions. Melanie’s work emphasizes equitable global engagement and capacity building, including building the capacity and careers of early and mid-career researchers from underrepresented groups to produce the next generation of diverse mental health leaders. Melanie’s research partners include governments and non-governmental agencies, musicians, and filmmakers as well as biomedical, behavioral, and social scientists.