Louise Michele Howard Obe MSc, MPhil, PhD, MRCP

Professor Louise Howard is Professor Emerita in Women’s Mental Health at King’s College London. She formed the Women’s Mental Health Research Group at King's in 2008, and has been Professor in Women’s Mental Health since 2010 and an Honorary Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. She was awarded a prestigious NIHR Research Professorship in 2013 and became an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2019. She was President of the International Marcé (perinatal mental health) Society 2020-2022 and awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2022.

Professor Howard has led several research programmes intending to improve mental health service policy and practice, including a focus on perinatal mental health and the relationship between violence and mental health. She led research informing the REF 2021 Impact Case Study 'The transformation of perinatal mental health care'. This research informed the updated NICE guidelines on how to identify and treat perinatal mental illness, developed new evidence-based care pathways, and was the basis of the specialist training of thousands of clinicians internationally, including via the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Health Education England. Her work also informed pregnancy planning tools commissioned by NHS England and Public Health England, which are available via the Tommy Baby’s Charity website and have been accessed by thousands of women. Her work on domestic abuse and human trafficking has similarly impacted thousands of clinicians and people with lived experience of abuse and mental health problems, through the development of curricula and CPD for international organisations, including the World Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization, and recommendations for the NHS.

She studied medicine at University College London, including an intercalated BSc in Psychology. She then trained in general medicine in Bloomsbury, obtaining the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in 1991, followed by. psychiatric training at the Maudsley. She obtained a Wellcome Trust Health Services Research Training Fellowship in perinatal psychiatry in 1997, obtained her PhD in 2003, and was appointed Senior Lecturer in 2004, promoted to Professor in 2010.

She has won a number of prizes for her research including the Association of European Psychiatrists Research Prize, the Institute of Psychiatry Dennis Hill Prize, the Royal College of Psychiatrists Bronze Medal research prize and in 2014 the International Marce Society’s Marce Medal for excellence in perinatal mental health research. She also chaired the NICE Guidance on Antenatal and Postnatal Mental Health 2014 (CG192).