Dr Giorgia Michelini

Giorgia Michelini

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Neurodiversity & Mental Health
Deputy Head of the Centre for Brain and Behaviour

School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences
Queen Mary University of London
www.qmul.ac.uk/sbbs/staff/giorgia-michelini-.html
Centre for Brain and Behaviour
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Research

ADHD, Neurodiversity, Mental health, Transdiagnostic, EEG, Children and adolescents

Interests

I specialise in neurodiversity and mental health. My work seeks to understand and identify neurodivergence and common mental health challenges (e.g. depression and anxiety) in young people, in order to promote better life outcomes.

At QMUL, I lead the Transdiagnostic Research on Emotion and NeuroDiversity (TREND) Lab (www.trend-lab.net/). ​​We take an interdisciplinary and joined-up (transdiagnostic) approach to these conditions and broadly focus on two main strands:
1) I study the biological (e.g. genetic, brain) and socio-environmental processes underlying neurodivergent and mental health conditions across development, to understand why many neurodivergent people struggle with their mental health and inform the development of biomarkers and intervention strategies. For example, our work has identified risk and protective factors associated with mental health challenges in neurodivergent and neurotypical young people.
2) I work on better capturing neurodivergent people's lived experiences and barriers to recognition of neurodevelopmental traits and mental health problems, in order to improve how we identify and support challenges in clinical and community settings. For example, I co-lead the development of a new measure of mental health and neurodivergent traits in young people for the international HiTOP consortium.

I enjoy working closely with people with lived experience and charities (e.g., Autistica, McPin) to co-produce research studies and increase the impact of my work. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss our work or get involved in ongoing studies.