Dr Sam Norton is developing an app to help efficiently incorporate mental healthcare into treatment for people living with rheumatoid arthritis.
Half a million people in the UK live with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a condition that causes joint inflammation, pain, stiffness and fatigue. Around a third of these people also experience a mental health condition.
Current drug treatments for RA can be helpful, but around 40% of people experience ongoing pain, fatigue and mental health problems even when the drug treatments have reduced inflammation. A personalised treatment approach that accurately targets both physical and mental health symptoms could be transformative.
So, Dr Sam Norton at Kings College London is creating an app to help healthcare professionals track symptoms and identify people at risk of ongoing problems. This will help healthcare professionals and people with RA select the most effective treatments and make the most of the time available in appointments.
Sam’s research will follow a three-part process:
Health organisations across the world recognise the need to incorporate mental health into treatment plans for physical health problems, but too often this doesn’t happen.
The digital tool created by Sam can help to make mental health an important priority within arthritis care. This integration has the potential to transform the lives of millions of people who live with arthritis and other long-term conditions.
This project is jointly funded with Arthritis Research UK.
Dr Sam Norton is a lecturer at Kings College London. He has a long-standing interest in mental health and rheumatology, with a particular interest in rheumatoid arthritis and quality of life.
Do natural variations in hormones, such as oestrogen, make anxiety disorders more likely? If so does this affect the way people respond to treatment?
Dr Lussier aims to determine the extent to which child and adolescent depression interacts with genetic susceptibility to influence suicide risk in early adulthood.
People with severe mental illnesses are at high risk of heart disease due to lack of physical activity and social isolation. Social prescribing can help, but is it accessible?