Our People

Professor Fiona Challacombe

Official Fellow

Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology

Department of Experimental Psychology

MA (Cantab), DClinPsy and PhD Kings College London

Fiona is an Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. She is also a member of the research staff for the Oxford Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Her work is primarily focused on advancing the understanding and treatment of mental health problems in the perinatal context, that is during pregnancy and the postnatal period. This includes adaptation of interventions for perinatal mental health difficulties with the aim of optimising outcomes for parent and child. A second theme of work is the development of interventions to support parental mental health in the context of high-risk pregnancies and complex birth outcomes.

Current research includes: time-intensive treatments for perinatal OCD and anxiety disorders; patterns of service use and outcomes in perinatal treatments using linked maternity and mental health data; examining the impact of parental mental health problems on child development using cohort data; development of online interventions for treatment and prevention of perinatal mental health problems.

Prior to coming to Oxford, Fiona gained her clinical doctorate and PhD from KCL, after which she won an NIHR lectureship. Fiona is patron of the service user led charity Maternal OCD which raises awareness of the disorder amongst service users and healthcare professionals. She is author of Break Free from Maternal Anxiety, and self-help and practitioner books on OCD.