Current Editors

Here are our amazing editors systematically and non-randomly listed in alphabetical order:

Editors:

 

Lone Baandrup

(Editor)

Lone.Baandrup@regionh.dk

Lone studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and gained basic training in medicine, surgery and neurology before specializing in psychiatry. Lone obtained a Ph.D. degree on different aspects of antipsychotic polypharmacy in patients with schizophrenia and became Doctor of Medical Sciences with a thesis and a number of publications focusing on antipsychotic combination treatment, chronic use of and tapering off benzodiazepines and sleep disturbances in psychosis. Lone is experienced in register-based and clinical research and her research focus is on psychopharmacological treatment for psychosis, sleep disturbances in psychosis and better pharmacological treatment options for dual diagnosis patients. Lone is Chair of Clinic at Mental Health Center Copenhagen, Denmark.

John Davis

John Davis

(Editor)

jdavis@psych.uic.edu

John has been doing meta-analysis since 1975, and his other research interests include the Drug treatment of schizophrenia, mania, depression, and the biology of major mental illnesses. He is at present the Professor of Psychiatry and Research Professor of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been on many Editorial Boards and on the FDA Psychopharmacology Advisory Committees in the United States. His achievements include Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, 2017 Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research, American College of Psychiatrists. Stanley Dean Award for Research in Schizophrenia, American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology Lifetime Achievement Award, and Tele Award Finalist 1976 for an educational video on Movement Disorders. (Somewhat similar to Academy Award for Film but for the category of educational-industrial film.) It is a great honour to have John involved with CSzG.

Mark

Hongyong Deng (Mark)

(Editor)

denghy@shutcm.edu.cn

Mark is a Professor at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Shanghai, China. His research interests are medical informatics (PythonMeta, a Python package of meta-analysis, and PyMeta, a web-based meta-analysis tool powered with the package) and EBM, especially Complementary and Alternative Medical (CAM) interventions for mental disorders. Mark worked with CSzG editorial team at the University of Nottingham as an academic visitor during 2015/12-2016/12 when he started working on CSzG's TCM reviews such as Wendan decoction, Ginkgo biloba, and Acupuncture. He also helped the team to organise TCM interventions and trials in our study-based register.

Adib Essali

(Editor)

Adib-Essali@hotmail.com

Adib obtained his MD from Damascus University in 1979, PhD from London University in 1990, and the MRCPsych from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK in 1992. Adib has been a consultant psychiatrist at the Waikato District Health Board, New Zealand since July 2014. Prior to that he had always worked in Damascus, with the excemption of eight years (1985 - 1993) in the UK, and a fellowship at  John Hopkins University (1995-1996). Adib's interest in systematic reviews and in evidence-based medicine began in the late 1980s. He was a founding member of the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group and established the Arabic Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in 1999.

 

Ajit Kumar 

(Editor)

drajitkr@gmail.com

Ajit is originally from India and currently works as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the Latrobe Regional Hospital, Traralgon, Australia. He has also been appointed as an Adjunct Lecturer with the Monash School of Medicine in Melbourne. Ajit finished his MBBS from the Bogomolets National Medical University in Kiev, Ukraine in 2004 and was subsequently invited to join the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group as a researcher. He later started his basic Psychiatry training in Leeds and did his higher training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Leeds and Bradford. After working for a few years in the UK as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, he moved to Traralgon, Australia to join the Latrobe Regional Hospital. Over the years he has published a number of Cochrane reviews and has a special interest in Childhood psychosis.

Stefan Leucht

(Editor)

Stefan.Leucht@lrz.tu-muenchen.de 

Stefan studied medicine at the Ludwig-Maximillian Universität München. Since then he has worked as a doctor at the Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie of the Technische Universität München, Germany, with an interim stay at the Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York and the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Oxford. Beside his contributions to the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group he is carrying out randomised controlled trials about clinical aspects of schizophrenia treatment, he is conducting research on methodological aspects of clinical trials and has interests in compliance, medical decision making and pharmocogenetics. He is also honorary Professor of Evidence-based psychopharmacological treatment at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Chunbo Li

(Editor)

Licb@smhc.org.cn

Chunbo studied medicine at Shanghai Tiedao Medical College, Shanghai, China. He obtained his M.D. at Shanghai Second Medical University. He works as a psychiatrist and a researcher in Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. Besides his work with Cochrane Schizophrenia Group (editor, from 2006; he is the director of Chinese Satellite of the Schizophrenia Group), he holds Cochrane systematic review training in China every year since 2007. He is carrying out studies on cognitive ageing, physical therapy of schizophrenia and anxiety disorder. His other research interests include outcome measure of psychiatry service, etc.

Javier Ortiz Orendain

(Editor)

Javier.ortiz@yale.edu

Javier is a senior psychiatry resident at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He has been working with Cochrane Mexico and Cochrane Schizophrenia since 2015. In 2017, he visited Nottingham for a month to get familiar with the inner workings of the editorial base and attended the editorial meeting. He immediately got infected by the CSzG’s spirit and accepted to become an editor. He wants to continue to work towards the goal of systematically reviewing all the clinical trials of treatments for schizophrenia. His research interests revolve around the early detection and intervention of schizophrenia, cognition in schizophrenia, and psychiatric rehabilitation strategies for schizophrenia.

Marianna Purgato

(Editor)

marianna.purgato@univr.it

Marianna Purgato, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with an interest in applying the evidence-based approach to the evaluation of the effectiveness of psychological and psychosocial interventions for mental health conditions, with a particular focus on global mental health. She is also interested in the implementation of scientific evidence into clinical practice using rigorous and innovative research methodologies. She currently works as assistant professor at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health and Service Evaluation, University of Verona, Italy.

Ranganath Rattehalli

(Editor)

drattehalli@hotmail.com

Awaiting for an update.

 

Alessandro Rodolico

(Editor)

alessandro.rodolico@me.com

Alessandro studied medicine and is about to finish his residency in psychiatry at the University of Catania (Italy). He had the possibility to learn more about Cochrane methods in 2016 when he attended a post-graduate course about systematic reviews and meta-analyses at the University of Verona (Italy). His interest in Cochrane methods and Evidence Synthesis, in general, led him to spend one year at the Technical University of Munich (Germany). There, he focused on both pairwise and network meta-analyses methodology. His research interests include reviews on both pharmacological and psychosocial interventions, with a focus on relapse prevention in schizophrenia and antipsychotics dose management. His current methodological areas of interest are indirect comparisons methodology (i.e.: network meta-analysis and component network meta-analysis) and Living Systematic Reviews methods.

 

Johannes Schneider-Thoma

(Editor)

joh.schneider@tum.de

Johannes studied medicine at the universities of Saarland/Germany and Regensburg/Germany. He obtained his M.D. (Dr. med.) from the University of Saarland and worked as a clinical psychiatrist at the community hospital of Landsberg am Lech/Germany. In 2015 he joined the section of evidence-based medicine in psychiatry and psychotherapy (lead: Prof. Stefan Leucht) at the Technical University of Munich/Germany. His research interest is evidence-based treatment of schizophrenia. Together with the group of Stefan Leucht he published several systematic reviews with (network-)meta-analysis, including Cochrane reviews, in this field.

Myrto Samara

(Editor)

samaramyrto@gmail.com

Myrto is a psychiatrist, currently working at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), AHEPA University Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2002, she was accepted as the top student in the School of Medicine, AUTH, Greece (first rank) and gained a scholarship. In 2009, she started her residency in Psychiatry at the 3rd Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital AHEPA, AUTH, Greece. In 2011, she gained a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation for one-year research in Psychiatry and moved to Munich, Germany. In April 2018, she received her board approval as a psychiatrist. Up to January 2020, she worked as a research associate, resident doctor and postdoc researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany where she completed her doctorate in psychiatry with the doctoral thesis “Meta-analysis in schizophrenia trials: comparison of chlorpromazine versus every other antipsychotic drug for schizophrenia and assessment of an imputation technique for estimating response rates from means and standard deviations in schizophrenia”.

Spyridon Siafis

(Editor)

Spyridon.Siafis@tum.de

Spyridon (Spiros) is a clinical scientist and post-doctoral researcher in psychiatry. He obtained his medical degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and completed his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich. Since 2018, he has been working at the Section of Evidence-Based Medicine in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. Spiros has extensive expertise in different types of meta-analyses, shared-decision making, clinical trials, drug safety, and pharmacoepidemiology, all with a strong emphasis on evidence-based medicine. 

Jun Xia

(Editor)

Jun.Xia@nottingham.ac.uk

Jun Xia studied psychology and business management at The University of Leeds, before pursuing an MSc in healthcare research methods in the same University. She joined The Cochrane Schizophrenia Group in 2005 as a systematic reviewer, and embarked on a journey to pursue evidence informed healthcare. Her main expertise is around secondary evidence synthesis, particularly systematic reviews and meta-analysis. She worked extensively with The Cochrane Collaboration and authored over 50 Cochrane systematic reviews in a diverse range of healthcare topics in both physical and mental health. She also has a strong research interest in the development of evidence-based clinical practice guideline, in particular, the use of GRADE EtD framework in guideline development.

Yikang Zhu (Connie)

(Editor)

yikang_zhu@163.com

Yikang (Connie) works as a researcher at Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. She obtained her doctoral degree at Technical University of Munich, Germany. She firstly came into contact with Cochrane Systematic Review in 2009 when she attended the Nottingham-Shanghai Systematic Review Course in Shanghai. She has gained training in network meta-analysis when she was conducting her doctoral project in Munich. Her research interests focus on optimizing treatment in schizophrenia (e.g. drug choice in first-episode schizophrenia, optimal antipsychotic dose, and predictor of drug response and functioning outcome). 

Associate Editors:

Anna Ceraso

(Associate Editor)

ceras.anna@gmail.com

Anna is a psychiatrist, currently working at Spedali Civili Hospital in Brescia/Italy. During her residency she had the opportunity to explore her interest in systematic evidence synthesis methods and evidence-based psychiatric medicine, spending some months at the Technische Universität München/Germany, section of Evidence-based Medicine in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (lead: Prof. Stefan Leucht). There she updated an important Cochrane review on maintenance treatment with antipsychotics in schizophrenia. Her current main research interests include the personalisation of treatment for people living with schizophrenia, in terms of both pharmacological and rehabilitative interventions and the integration of the two, with a special focus on cognitive remediation and other cognitive enhancement approaches. In addition, she enjoys meta-analytic approaches because they can shed peculiar light on potential unmet issues in available evidence, but also on optimal future directions for research.

 

Pierfelice Cutrufelli

(Associate Editor)

pierfelicecutrufelli@yahoo.it

Pierfelice is a psychiatric resident, currently working at the University Hospital at Catania (Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria Policlinico "G. Rodolico - San Marco"). His interest in evidence-based medicine grew during his university years, which led him to work for his MD thesis on a network meta-analysis about familiar interventions in schizophrenia. He also began collaborating with the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group since then. His main interests are research on patients' quality of life and recovery strategy, drug therapy optimization, and psychological/psychosocial interventions efficacy.

Soumitra S Datta

(Associate Editor)

ssdatta2000@yahoo.com


Soumitra is a consultant child psychiatrist currently working in the in Tata Medical Center, Kolkata. His research interests are psycho-oncology, systematic reviews, decision making, attachment, and social aspects of medicine. Soumitra holds an honorary research appointment with the Institute of Clinical Trials & Methodology of the University College London. He trained in psychiatry in Christian Medical College Vellore and also in the United Kingdom. He worked as a consultant child psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and Kings College Hospital, London prior to his current post in India. He has been a lead reviewer for Cochrane Collaboration for almost 2 decades and his recent Cochrane review on Psychological interventions for adolescents with psychosis was a featured review of the Cochrane Collaboration in 2020.

Bartosz Helfer

(Associate Editor)

bartosz.helfer@gmail.com

Bartosz is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK. He studied evidence-based psychiatry at Technical University in Munich, Germany and subsequently at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK with clinical placements at the Maudsley Hospital, where he received his PhD in developmental psychopathology. Apart from systematic reviews and their methodology, his area of special interest is meta-research, which investigates research methods and practices to understand how to reduce biases in science and thereby deliver more reliable and secure conclusions from scientific studies. Bartosz is interested in how much we can trust the findings from clinical trials and what aspects of the research process could be improved to increase its value and reduce waste of time and research resources.

Christine Rummel-Kluge

(Associate Editor)

Christine.Rummel-Kluge@medizin.uni-leipzig.de

Christine studied medicine at the Technische Universität München, Germany. She has been working as a resident at the Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie of the Technische Universität München, Germany, has been managing director of the German Depression Foundation and is currently working as a psychiatrist and consultant in the Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie of the University Leipzig, where she is heading the outpatient department. Besides her interest in evidence-based medicine, she is doing research in the E-mental health area.

Hiroyoshi Takeuchi 

(Associate Editor)

hirotak@dk9.so-net.ne.jp

Hiroyoshi Takeuchi is Assistant Professor at Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine. After graduating from Chiba University School of Medicine in 2001, he joined Keio University School of Medicine as a clinician-researcher. After completing Ph.D. program at Keio University School of Medicine in 2012, he worked as a postdoctoral/clinical fellow at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto until 2017. His primary research interest is optimizing antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia across the illness status (i.e., first-episode to treatment-resistant schizophrenia) and the treatment phase (i.e., acute to maintenance treatment) to improve cognitive impairment and negative symptoms, core but treatment resistant features in schizophrenia, while minimizing side effects.

Economic Editor:

Vivek Furtado

(Economic Editor)

Vivek.Furtado@nhs.net

Vivek is our Mental Health Economic Editor and deals with economic issues surrounding Cochrane systematic reviews of schizophrenia trials. He is currently an Associate Clinical Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Warwick and Honorary Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at the Tamarind Centre, a medium secure unit within the West Midlands. He completed his Masters in Health Policy and Financing from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Vivek is currently a co-applicant of an NIHR SDO funded project looking at length of stay of forensic psychiatric patients in high and medium secure settings. He is also a member of the EU-COST project which aims to collaborate across EU countries in bringing expertise in long term care of forensic psychiatric patients. His main areas of interest include forensic psychiatric research, health economics, service provision and old age forensic psychiatry.

* Each active member of our editorial team has declared their conflicts of interest here.