Hamid Alhaj

Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Sharjah, UAE. He is an Executive Member and Director of Research of the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care and Low Secure Units (NAPICU). He has previously worked as consultant psychiatrist in Sheffield in addition to other educational roles including being Foundation Training Programme Director (TPD) for Health Education England and Director of Postgraduate Medical Education at Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust. His other academic roles include being an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield and a PLAB examiner for the General Medical Council (UK). Hamid did his psychiatric training in the Northeast of England, where he obtained his PhD at Newcastle University. He was also awarded an Academic Clinical Fellowship from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to facilitate the development of his academic and research work, while continuing his clinical training. In 2013, Hamid was appointed as an NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. His clinical research interests are focussed on understanding the aetiology of common and severe mental health problems and developing innovative approaches to manage them. He has previously utilised neuroimaging techniques to investigate the cognitive changes in patients with mood and psychotic disorders as well as healthy individuals. As NAPICU Director of Research, he has developed national clinical research collaboration to establish a set of evidence-based guidelines for restrictive environments in the mental health setting.