Professor Nick Midgley

Nick Midgley is Professor of Psychological Therapies for Children and Young People and director of the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe) at Anna Freud / UCL, London.

He is one of the authors of the book, 'Mentalization-Based Treatment with Children: a Time-Limited Approach' (APA, 2017) and is currently leading the ERiC study, a clinical trial of MBT for school-age children with emotional and behavioural problems.

Teaching experience

Prof. Midgley teaches across a number of UCL programmes, and for many years he was Programme Director for the MSc in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice. He is now the Academic Course Director for the professional doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, which is run in collaboration with Anna Freud and the British Psychotherapy Foundation. The course provides a professional training for those wishing to work therapeutically with children and families in the NHS.

Research experience

Prof. Midgley's primary research interest is in evaluating and better understanding psychological therapies with children and young people. He has a strong commitment to examining the child's perspective on mental health and psychotherapy.

Prof Midgley has worked on the evaluation of psychological therapies for adolescents with depression (the IMPACT Study), including an innovative online treatment for teens with low mood (the D:OT Study). His current research focuses especially on the mental health needs of children in care, including an NIHR-funded clinical trial of the Reflective Fostering Programme (2020-2023).

Clinical experience

Prof. Midgley trained as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and worked in the National Health Service before moving to UCL. He has been involved in the adaptation of contemporary psychodynamic treatments for use with children and families, and was one of the authors of the Short-Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (STPP) treatment manual that is recommended by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the treatment of adolescent depression.

Prof. Midgley also helped develop Mentalization-Based Treatment for Children (MBT-C), a transdiagnostic therapy for children aged 6-12, and has provided training in MBT-C to child mental health professionals in the UK and around the world.

Publications

Prof. Midgley is the author of several books, including Reading Anna Freud (Routledge, 2012), Essential Research Findings for Child and Adolescent Counselling and Psychotherapy (Sage, 2017, with Mick Cooper and Jac Hayes) and Mentalization-Based Treatment for Children: a time-limited approach (APA, 2017).

He has published over 100 book chapters and peer-review papers. For more details, please see: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/people/nick-midgley#publications