Dr Tom Pollak

Dr Thomas Pollak, PhD MRCPsych is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, UK, and a general adult psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. His specialist clinical interest is in neuropsychiatry. He has set up and co-runs a joint multidisciplinary clinic dedicated to the assessment and management of patients with confirmed or suspected autoimmune encephalitis and other central nervous system autoimmune disorders, at King’s College Hospital, London, and a newly-opened ‘long COVID’ clinic. With colleagues at King’s Health Partners he is embarking on a programme of research into autoimmune neuropsychiatry and the neuropsychiatry of infections, with the aim of improving clinical recognition and outcomes for patients. He has trained in psychology (BA; Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford), medicine (MBBS; King’s College London), clinical psychiatry (MRCPsych; Royal College of Psychiatrists) and clinical neurology (MSc; University College London). In 2015 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship to look at the neuroimmunological basis of psychiatric disease, with a particular focus on the autoantibodies known to cause autoimmune encephalitis. In his current work, he is using neuroimaging and neuroimmunological methods to characterise the significance of autoantibodies to neuronal surface antigens in early psychosis. His other research interests include the role of infections in psychiatry, glutamatergic abnormalities in psychosis and organic presentations in clinical neuropsychiatry. He sits on the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Encephalitis Society.