Peter Fonagy

Peter Fonagy is the Chief Executive of Anna Freud, London; and holds visiting professorships at Yale and Harvard Medical Schools.

His clinical interests centre on issues of early attachment relationships, social cognition, borderline personality disorder, antisocial behaviour and violence. His longitudinal studies which linked the quality of parent-infant attachment to theory of mind development have important implications for strategies for early prevention not accounted for by genetic influences. The link between human attachment and social cognition led Bateman, Fonagy and colleagues to develop a model of and a highly effective treatment approach for borderline personality disorders (BPD). Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) is now one of the two evidence-based psychological treatments used for severe PD and is widely practiced in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Peter is Senior National Clinical Adviser on Children and Young People's Mental Health for NHS England, Programme Director of the UCL Partners Integrated Mental Health programme and has chaired major national expert groups including two NICE Guideline Development Groups on childhood and adolescent depression and the attachment in children at the edge of care.

He is leader of the Mental Health theme in the North Thames CLAHRC and a Senior Investigator for the National Institute of Health Research. He has published nearly 500 scientific papers, 260 chapters and has authored or co-authored 19 books.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences and the American Association for Psychological Science, and was elected to Honorary Fellowship by the American College of Psychiatrists.

He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from several national and international professional associations including the British Psychological Society, the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorder, the British and Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder, the World Association for Infant Mental Health and was in 2015 the first UK recipient of the Wiley Prize of the British Academy for Outstanding Achievements in Psychology by an international scholar.