Pastoral Cymru are delighted to welcome Dr Andrew Hider as Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Pastoral Cymru are delighted to welcome Dr Andrew Hider as Consultant Clinical Psychologist. Andrew will join the Psychology team based at Ty Catrin, taking up his post in mid June.

Andrew read psychology, philosophy and physiology (PPP) at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, graduating in 1996. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology in 2001.

He has worked in the NHS for 14 years, most recently as psychologist for rehabilitation and recovery in Cwm Taf LHB, where he had special responsibilities for coordinating and undertaking specialist violence risk assessments in the mental health directorate. Andrew also has significant experience in working in forensic settings, having spent 4 years in Caswell Clinic Medium Secure Unit, Bridgend.

He has extensive experience in providing clinical supervision in the use of structured clinical assessments of violence and risk and has developed and promoted the use of formulation based care in inpatient settings. Andrew has also been a member of the LHB’s  psychological therapies management group and has acted as a clinical advisor to the Welsh Assembly Government in a number of areas of mental health policy development, including early intervention and violence risk assessment.

His specialist clinical interest is in the case formulation and management of complex problems that often present with a mixture of psychotic symptoms, personality disorder and challenging behaviour, often with co-existing neuropsychological/intellectual impairment.

He has co authored a number of journal articles and presented his research to national fora. He provides teaching on violence risk assessment and cognitive behavioural therapy to the South Wales Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and is an external lecturer on the BSc in Violence Reduction at the University of Glamorgan.  His research interests include neuropsychological impairments in personality disorder and  clinical decision making in the formulation and prediction of violence risk.

Andrew has had training in the use of several clinical treatment approaches including mentalisation based treatment, acceptance based approaches and functional analytic psychotherapy.

With Professor Nicola Gray, he has co authored a multidisciplinary training course in risk formulation for Welsh NHS mental health staff on behalf of the Wales Applied Risk Research Network (WARRN). He was recently invited to act as an external consultant to the Royal College of Nursing in Wales, and is currently helping them to develop training in psychological management skills for general medical nursing staff in Wales.