OCD-UK is twenty years old in 2024, and in this presentation Professor Salkovskis will look back over the last 20 years of our understanding of OCD to see if it  has improved somewhat. Paul will consider what he has learned not only from research but also and more importantly from working with people experiencing OCD and overcoming it. It has been a story of slow but steady progress, with some bumps and wrong turns along the way.

Research Link: https://oxicptr.web.ox.ac.uk/help-our-research

Professor Paul Salkovskis is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Applied Science and also a patron of the national charity, OCD-UK.

Paul Salkovskis qualified as a clinical psychologist in 1979 at the Institute of Psychiatry. He worked for six years in Yorkshire (in Huddersfield then Leeds) as a full time NHS clinical psychologist before moving to Oxford as a Research Clinical Psychologist. In Oxford he was promoted to Professor before moving to work at King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry as Professor of Clinical Psychology and Applied Science and Clinical Director in the Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma in SLaM NHS Trust.

In 2010 he was appointed Programme Director for the Clinical Psychology Doctorate Programme at the University of Bath where Paul set up and ran a specialist OCD treatment Clinic.

He is regarded as an expert in the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders in general, and more specifically in OCD, Panic and Agoraphobia and health anxiety, having contributed to the psychological understanding and treatment of these areas.

Paul is also currently Editor of the BABCP Journal, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, and is President of the BABCP.

In 2018 he moved to the University of Oxford to take up the roles of Director of Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and the Director of Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre, where he will continue clinical work at the Oxford Health Specialist Psychological Intervention Centre (OHSPIC).