Dr Mary Docherty is a Clinical Quality Improvement Fellow in the Mental Health Strategic Clinical Network and Specialty Registrar at the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust.

She currently holds a Darzi Fellowship supported by the Healthy London Partnership and is taking a lead role, through Healthy London Partnership, in a London-wide initiative to reduce the premature mortality of people with serious mental illness.

Mary came to medicine with previous degrees in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, completed a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Academic Foundation Programme at the Institute of Neuroscience in Newcastle and an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN). She undertook her core training and specialty training on the Maudsley Training Programme following a year secondment in the Research and Development team at NICE on the Chief Medical Officer’s Clinical Advisors Scheme.

As Clinical Fellow at the IoPPN her research interests are in service improvement, treatment and service gaps in UK Mental Health provision and cognitive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. She co-authored a national review chapter on Parity of Esteem in the Chief Medical Officer’s 2014 report on Public Mental Health. Mary also developed and ran with the National Psychosis Service the first specialist clinic dedicated to the assessment and treatment of cognitive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

She is involved in clinical research, service development initiatives and a Kings Health Partners strategic academic network aimed at exploring and addressing the mortality gap in people with serious and enduring mental illness.