Clare

Gerada

Clare Gerada is a family doctor with a special interest in mental health. Clare has worked all her professional life in the field of addiction, starting in the late 1980s when HIV was beginning to move from men who had sex with men to intravenous drug users. She has pioneered changes in how services have been delivered to this drug, alcohol and now those with gambling addiction. Until recently, she set up and led the largest physician health service in the world, NHS Practitioner Health. Around 20,000 doctors, dentists and other health staff have presented for care. This service provides confidential help to health professionals suffering from mental illness and addiction and started following the death through the suicide of a young psychiatrist. Her work, including research, talks, writings, and books, has transformed how mentally impaired doctors are managed in the UK health service, ensuring that they receive a more humane and less adversarial approach from the regulator. Her award-winning book Beneath The White Coat: Doctors Their Minds and Mental Health explores why doctors make good addicts and bad doctors and how a doctor’s identity prevents them from seeking timely care. Over the years, Clare has led her profession as the Chair of her professional body (the Royal College of General Practitioners) and as President. She is only the second woman in the history of the College to hold both posts. She is a Patron of the Charity Doctors in Distress, which aims to reduce the rate of suicide amongst health professionals, holds a senior role advising the NHS Executive (as co-chair of the NHS Assembly) and is a non-executive director of Cygnet Health (an Independent Mental Health Service), UK Biobank, and Jersey Health Care.