Catherine Harmer

Professor Catherine Harmer is a distinguished scholar and the Director of the Psychopharmacology and Emotional Research Lab (PERL) at the University Department of Psychiatry in Oxford. Her lab, composed of a multidisciplinary team including cognitive neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychopharmacologists, and psychologists, is at the forefront of research on the psychological mechanisms underpinning antidepressant drug action.

 

Professor Harmer's research is notable for its innovative integration of psychological and pharmacological perspectives on depression and treatment. By applying an experimental medicine approach, her work utilizes neurocognitive measures to investigate emotional processing in both healthy individuals and patient populations. This approach not only challenges conventional paradigms of drug treatment for depression but also contributes to the development of novel human experimental models.

 

Her pioneering studies have significantly advanced the understanding of how antidepressant treatments affect emotional processing, as evidenced by seminal publications such as Harmer et al. (2017). Additionally, Professor Harmer's research has led to practical clinical applications, including the development of early markers for SSRI non-response in primary care, as demonstrated in Browning et al. (2021). Her contributions continue to shape contemporary approaches to psychopharmacology and the treatment of mood disorders.