Amanda Griffiths

Biography

Professor Amanda Griffiths PhD MSc PGCE CPsychol AFBPsS FAcSS is a Fellow of the UK's Academy of Social Sciences, a Health & Care Professions Council practitioner health psychologist, and Registered Europsy Psychologist. In 2013, she joined the Division of Psychiatry and Applied Psychology in the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham. She is a Professorial Fellow of the Institute of Mental Health (Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and the University of Nottingham) and a member of its Centre for Dementia, Centre for Social Futures. and Centre for Forensic and Family Psychology. Amanda is on the Research Committee of the UK's Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. She has served on advisory committees and produced commissioned reports for the European Commission, International Commission on Occupational Health, European Agency for Safety & Health at Work, World Health Organisation, International Labour Office, British Government Health & Safety Executive, public and private sector employers, charities and trades unions. She holds the world's first Chair in Occupational Health Psychology and was a founder member of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology. She is on the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Workplace Health Management, and Consulting Editor for the journal Work and Stress: An International Journal of Work, Health & Organisations. Amanda's research interests are reflected in her memberships of the Academic Forum of Occupational Medicine and Health (UK Faculty of Occupational Medicine), the Society of Occupational Medicine, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Special Interest Group on occupational psychiatry (OPSIG), and Interdem, a pan-European network of researchers advocating timely psychosocial interventions aimed at improving the quality of life of people with dementia and their supporters.

Research Interest

Amanda's research interests include: older women's mental health and wellbeing; menopause; working age dementia; development and wellbeing of health professionals who care for people with dementia. She is an advocate of the role of well designed and healthy work in preventing social exclusion and promoting mental health and wellbeing. Her research involves collaborations with healthcare practitioners and policy makers. Projects in 2015-2017 include a randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effects of a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) based intervention designed to assist women deal with troublesome menopausal symptoms (funded by the charity Wellbeing of Women), a project on working age dementia (funded by Public Health England) and an investigation into the prevention of mental ill-health (common mental disorders) in Police Service employees (commissioned by Police Mutual), and a study about how to facilitate successful return to work for National Health Service employees who have been on sick leave with common mental health disorders (funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)). Recent work has also concerned the care of people with dementia in acute hospitals and in residential care homes (funded by NIHR and Nottinghamshire County Council respectively). She is a stakeholder in a Doctoral Training Centre funded by the Alzheimer's Society. Amanda's recent research on women's experience of the menopause has been influential in the development of policy and guidance at national and international levels. She was an invited contributor on this topic for the UK's Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report in 2015 and lead author of European guidance on workplace conditions for menopausal women in 2016. This research has also been influential in guidance produced by the Royal College of Nursing, the Trades Union Congress, and in on-line advice for women (Healthtalk.org). Her past research on preventing work-related mental ill-health was at the forefront of developing an evidence base for tackling the organisational causes of work-related stress. She and colleagues were commissioned by the UK Government's Health & Safety Executive to work with employers to develop a risk management approach to the control of psychosocial risks to health at work. This paved the way for the current British Government advice to employers about how to avoid this largest cause of work-related ill-health and sickness absence today and has influenced the development of national and organisational level policies in the UK, the European Union and other countries around the world. This approach has proved effective in terms of both health and economic impact and has featured in a published case study of research impact. She has also acted as Expert Witness in the English courts for both claimants and defendants in work-related stress cases. In addition to the funding bodies listed above, her work and that of her PhD students and researchers has been supported by the Economic & Social Science Research Council, British Government's Health & Safety Executive, European Commission, World Health Organisation, Shell International Exploration & Production, BBC World Service, Ford of Europe, British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing, British Occupational Health Research Foundation, Colt Foundation, UNISON, British Association for Women in Policing and Age UK. Amanda is Co-Chair of the Research Ethics Committee in the Division of Psychiatry and Applied Psychology (School of Medicine).