Prof Melanie Abas is a psychiatric epidemiologist and Professor of Global Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London and Consultant Psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. She is Co-Chair of the King’s College London African Regional Network.
Melanie's research expertise is development and evaluation of interventions for common mental disorders in low resource settings, especially in countries with a high burden of HIV infection. She has worked on the Friendship Bench program for common mental disorders in Zimbabwe since 2009, led by Dr Dixon Chibanda. She is Chief Investigator on an R01 clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a stepped care intervention to improve depression and adherence to HIV medication in adults at risk of persistent viral non-suppression. Research partners include NGOs implementing large scale programs for vulnerable groups, including OPHID and NEEM, Ministries of Health, musicians and filmmakers as well as biomedical and social scientists in the UK, in African countries and in the US. Melanie's work has been further characterised by capacity building, having worked on two large African-led capacity building programs since 2010, as a co-PI for the Medical Education Partnership Initiative led by Prof James Hakim, and as KCL lead for The African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI), led by Dr Dixon Chibanda. She was also a founding member of the KCL/LSHTM Masters in Global Mental Health.
