Psychiatrist secures sporty new role

Posted: 30/01/18

A leading NHS psychiatrist is teaming up with a local University to share his wealth of knowledge with sports and exercise science students.

Dr Alan Currie, Consultant Psychiatrist at Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (NTW), a provider of mental health and disability services has recently become a visiting honorary professor at the University of Sunderland.

Through his published work looking at how exercise and physical activity can be used to help with mental health problems, Dr Currie will be using his experience, knowledge and new ideas to support the work that is already taking place in the University’s Sports and Exercise Sciences department.

It will be great to work closely with the University and watch the collaboration between our two organisations flourish and grow into something that we will all benefit from.

I’d like to see exercise more fully included in mainstream clinical practice because it really does improve mental wellbeing. I’d also like the problems that athletes can experience to be understood more fully and for the right sort of help to be available for them, just as it is when they tear a hamstring or rupture a ligament.

Dr Alan CurrieConsultant Psychiatrist

Dr Currie will be giving his inaugural lecture on ‘Sport, Exercise and Psychiatry – why exercising is good for your mental health but being an athlete isn’t, on Friday 16 February at 12.30pm in the Murray Library Lecture Theatre, University of Sunderland.

Dr Currie’s appointment is an exciting development for the Sport and Exercise Science team at the University of Sunderland and fits perfectly with the direction that their Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing is taking.