Kevin Gournay

Kevin J.M. Gournay CBE FRCN FMedSci , has been a Professor of Psychiatric Nursing at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London since 1995 and has been responsible for a very wide range of research, policy and practice development in mental health nursing.

He was awarded a Fellowship in the Royal College of Nursing in 1998 for his contributions to education, research, policy and practice development in mental health nursing.

One of the UK's first nurse therapists, trained at the Maudsley Hospital in the 1970s, Gournay combined academics with clinical practice as a nurse therapist/psychologist, specialising in the cognitive behavioural treatment of a range of mental health problems, including panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia.

Initiatives

He has been responsible for a number of initiatives that have improved nursing care, including:

Affiliations

Gournay has served on numerous government bodies and was recently Special Adviser to the UK Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights. He is President and founding Patron of No Panic, the UK's largest anxiety disorder, self-help charity.

Fellowships

Awards

Clinical expertise

In the past 10 years Gournay has also developed expertise in the psychological treatment of depression and schizophrenia. His treatment method is principally cognitive behaviour therapy in which he is fully accredited as a therapist.

Research and teaching

Gournay has held major research grants, over a period of 23 years, notably in the cognitive behavioural treatment of phobic anxiety, body image disorders, the use of medication, epidemiology, health economics and community mental health. At the present time, he has personal responsibility for 17 research projects and he is the author of approximately 300 journal articles, conference papers (national and international), books, book chapters and reports. He published a textbook on agoraphobia in 1989 and has published widely on anxiety disorders.

Gournay set up and ran the country's first multi-disciplinary Masters programme for mental health professionals in the area of interventions for serious mental illness. He has had attachments to the University of New South Wales, and the University of Wollongong, where he has taught on the subjects of post traumatic stress and the management of severe mental illness. He directs a number of training programmes for mental health professionals (doctors, psychologists and nurses) and his experience includes teaching in a number of countries including other European countries as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, and Russia.

Publications

Gournay is the author of more than 300 chapters, articles, books and conference papers, including:

Books/monographs

Journal articles

Sources