Dr Ulrich Reininghaus

Dr Ulrich Reininghaus is an NIHR Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Health and Population Research Department at the Institute of Psychiatry in London and Research Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge, working on the MRC AESOP study. He was formerly a Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, funded through a personal award from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). His scientific career to date has been that of a psychologist with a strong interest in social psychiatry, focusing on the onset, course, and outcome of psychosis."

Ulrich was awarded a Ph.D. in Social and Community Psychiatry by Queen Mary University of London, having previously obtained an MSc in Mental Health Studies at Kings College London, in 2005, and a Diploma in Psychology at the University of Hamburg in 2006. His studies were funded by a scholarship grant by the Evangelisches Studienwerk, Villigst, Germany. His research experience includes positions as Visiting Research Associate with the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, as Honorary Research Fellow with Bart's and The London School of Medicine, and as Researcher with the East London NHS Foundation Trust. His main research interests are in evaluating treatments for psychosis, in applying innovative measurement methods in psychotic patients, and in social and psychological factors in the aetiology of psychosis.

The research he conducts as part of his NIHR Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, uses the Experience Sampling Method to investigate stress sensitivity as a mechanism through which exposure to social adversity, particularly in childhood, may increase risk for psychosis. In his position as Research Associate at Cambridge, Ulrich works on the 10-year MRC funded follow-up of the Aetiology and Ethnicity in Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses (ÆSOP) study. The research he conducted as part of his NIHR Research Training Fellowship focused on improving the measurement of patient-reported outcomes in patients with psychosis, applying methods of item response theory. His work addressed a number of methodological challenges in terms of the psychometric properties of existing measures of patient-reported outcomes. His work using item response modelling and confirmatory factor analysis for ordinal data in MPlus is at the cutting edge of developments in the field. He is also involved in the analysis of several large European studies that are part of a major European collaboration.