Michael Sharpe (psychiatrist)
British psychiatrist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Sharpe is a British psychiatrist and academic, specialising in the psychiatric aspects of medical illness. He is an emeritus Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Saint Cross College, Oxford. From 1997 to 2011, he was Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.[1][2] Sharpe was the elected President of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine for 2022–2023.[3]
Work
While a professor at Oxford, Sharpe ran a research programme to develop and evaluate psychiatric treatments for medically ill patients.[4]
Sharpe has worked on the CFS/ME for years, and is perhaps best known as a co-author on the controversial PACE trial. He, like CFS researcher Simon Wessely, has since then withdrawn from CFS/ME research, saying the climate had become “too toxic” because of online abuse from some patients who reject his claims that CFS/ME is a mental illness.[5]
In 2021 he controversially gave a presentation on secondary COVID-19 impacts[6] to Swiss Re in which he suggested that Long COVID was partly caused by psychological and social factors such as reportage by the Guardian columnist George Monbiot.[7]
Sharpe's recent work is on depression in people with cancer and the mental health of elderly inpatients.[8]
Honours
In 2009, he was named Psychiatric Academic of the Year by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.[9] In 2014, he was named Psychiatrist of the Year by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.[10]