Director, Oxford Centre for Psychological Health, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust
Director, Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and Research
Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
Director, Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre
Director, Oxford Health Specialist Psychological Interventions Clinic
Senior Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford
Paul Salkovskis went to Kelso High School, in the Scottish Borders, then completed an Undergraduate degree at the University of Reading. He qualified as a clinical psychologist in 1979 at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital. He then worked for six years in Yorkshire (in Huddersfield then Leeds) as a full time NHS clinical psychologist in Psychology services and Liaison Psychiatry, before moving to Oxford as a Research Clinical Psychologist. He was awarded his PhD from the University of Reading in 1990. While working in Oxford he was a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow, and was promoted to Professor of Cognitive Psychology of the University before moving to work at King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry as Professor of Clinical Psychology and Applied Science and Clinical Director in the Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma in SLaM NHS Trust. From 2010 until 2018 he was Programme and Research Director for the Clinical Psychology Doctorate Programme at Bath, which he developed as a new programme. In Bath, Paul also set up and ran a highly specialist NHS Clinic, working with Avon and Wiltshire Partnership NHS Trust, accepting national referrals involving people experiencing severe anxiety problems who had not found previous treatment sufficiently helpful.
In April 2018 he began his appointment as Director of the Oxford Centre for Psychological Health, the Oxford Institute for Clinical Psychology Training and Research and The Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre (University of Oxford and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust). In 2019 he was appointed as Professor of Clinical Psychology in the University of Oxford Department of Experimental Psychology.
He has continued to carry out clinical work in the NHS throughout his entire career, and is the Director of the Oxford Health Specialist Psychological Interventions Clinic. He is strongly committed to the continued dissemination and improvement of appropriate help for mental health issues, working in partnership with all stakeholders.
He is regarded as an expert in several areas of clinical psychology, including Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders in general, and more specifically in OCD, Hoarding Disorder, Panic and Agoraphobia and Health Anxiety, having contributed to the psychological understanding and treatment of these areas. He also has expertise in Health Psychology, having working on Health Screening, Health Decision Making and the identification and treatment of psychological issues in “Medically Unexplained Symptoms” and Long Term Conditions. His interests also extend to the mechanism of change in psychological therapy and transdiagnostic factors such as the experience of and sensitivity to Betrayal, cognitive flexibility and safety seeking behaviour. He has published more than 400 articles and chapters.
He is registered with the HCPC as both a Health and Clinical Psychologist and is similarly Chartered with the BPS. He was recipient of several prizes including two different Aaron T Beck awards and the British Psychological Society Monte Shapiro Award. He is regularly invited to present at national and International Conferences. His principal influences in career terms are Jack Rachman, Tim Beck and Monte Shapiro.
Paul is currently Editor of the BABCP Journal, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, and is on the editorial board of several other journals. He is a past President of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies and past chair of the Group of Trainers in Clinical Psychology. He has served with NICE in several capacities, including guidelines groups. He is Patron of, and clinical adviser to, OCD and anxiety disorder charities. His main research interests include the study of cognitive (appraisal) and behavioural (safety seeking) factors in the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders. He has led CBT skills training both nationally and throughout the world.
