Matthew Constantinou
Organisation(s)
Anna Freud Centre
Overview
I am an Early Years Therapist and Trainer in the Early Years and Prevention Department. I trained as a Clinical Psychologist at UCL, qualifying in 2022. Before this, I completed a PhD in Mental Health Science at UCL in 2019.
During my clinical training, I worked in various NHS settings in London, including a drug treatment service, Generic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), and Older Adult Psychotherapy service. I undertook a specialist placement at the Tavistock and Portman’s Whole Family Service, a Local Authority CAMHS team that delivers needs-based care using the THRIVE model and is integrated within Camden’s child and family services. I worked in both Under Fives and Over Fives pathways, offering attachment-based, trauma-informed therapies to children and families. I also co-delivered training in trauma-informed care and facilitated clinical consultation groups with Youth Early Help workers, Family Workers, Youth Justice Workers, and Youth Drug Workers in Camden using the AMBIT model.
My research focuses on transdiagnostic classification systems of mental health difficulties. For my PhD, I investigated the bifactor model, which groups mental health difficulties into a single dimension (the p factor) that captures the commonalities among all mental health difficulties, as well as more specific dimensions that capture the commonalities among subsets of difficulties (e.g., internalizing and externalizing factors). Interesting things happen when you analyze clinical outcomes data with the bifactor model. For example, one can start to see whether changes in say ‘mood’ or ‘disruptive behaviours’ following an intervention are the targeted result of the intervention or reflect broader changes in general severity/well-being (and this has quite big implications for understanding how our interventions work and whether they are as targeted as we brand them to be).
My passion lies with the early years, considering this from developmental, psychoanalytic, socio-political and cultural perspectives. I am interested in developing and delivering interventions that would be helpful, sensitive, and inclusive for the most disadvantaged children and families in the UK.