Christina van der Feltz - Cornelis
Emerita Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology

Profile

Biography

Professor Christina van der Feltz – Cornelis, psychiatrist-psychotherapist and epidemiologist, is emerita professor at the Department of Health Sciences of the University of York since October 2024.

She joined the University of York as one of the 60th Anniversary inspirational research leaders with a Chair of Psychiatry and Epidemiology in 2018. She moved to York from the Netherlands, where she held an endowed chair at Tilburg University as Professor of Social Psychiatry from 2010 - 2019.

She is honorary professor, Institute of Health Informatics, University College London since 2022. Follow Christina at ORCID or at Linkedin.

Christina was awarded a Cum Laude at her MD graduation at the School of Medicine Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1988. She registered as psychiatrist and psychotherapist in 1992 and as an epidemiologist in 1996, and held a full license to practice as psychiatrist in the UK since 2018. She completed her doctorate (PhD 2002) on Psychiatric consultation for patients with somatoform disorder in general practice at VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam.

She led a research and implementation program for diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders at the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos Instituut) from 2004 – 2012. In that capacity she led the Depression Initiative, a nationwide initiative to improve depression treatment in several health services settings in the Netherlands, that resulted in a shift towards provision of mental health treatment in the primary care setting rather than in specialist mental health care by collaborative care, an integrated care model.

She was full professor with an endowed chair for Social Psychiatry at Tilburg University from 2010 – 2019. She founded and directed the Clinical Centre for Body, Mind and Health at GGz Breburg, Tilburg (2010-2018), and together with her team won the Award Clinical Centre of Excellence (Keurmerk TOPGGz) in 2014.

As Co-investigator in the £6.8M NIHR research and DHSC funded new study of long COVID- STIMULATE-ICP (Symptoms, Trajectory, Inequalities and Management: Understanding Long COVID to Address and Transform Existing Integrated Care Pathways), Christina led the exploration of mental health aspects and the transferability of the findings for integrated care to other long-term conditions. See the details.

Christina led the University of York team of the EMPOWER project: A European collaborative project aimed at reducing work stress started January 1st 2020, in which the University of York was one of the collaborating partners. It was funded with € 3.99M by the EU Horizon 2020 programme.  

Christina has generated competitive research income of € 15,430,138 with funding from the Netherlands and European funding, and 8,439,441 UK funding as main applicant and co-applicant.

Qualifications

• MD Medicine, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1988
• MedSc Psychiatry, University of Amsterdam, 1992
• Member of the Dutch Association of Psychiatrists and registered as psychotherapist, 1992
• Reg VvE Epidemiology, 1996
• PhD Medicine, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, 2002
• Reg SMWBO Epidemiology, 2006
• International Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, 2013
• Full license to practice gmc/ Honorary Consultant Psychiatry, NHS, UK, 2018
• Psychosomatic specialist, International College of Psychosomatic Medicine, 2022
• International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, 2023

Research

Overview

Christina is a world-renowned mental health researcher and one of only 5 chairs in psychiatry and epidemiology in the UK, with an international profile as leading academic in her field in the interface of somatic and psychiatric disorders and the application of scientific findings regarding diagnosis and treatment interventions to personalise treatment of mental health conditions. Her research interests are work stress, systemic low-grade inflammation in Somatic Symptom Disorders, complex long-term conditions and multimorbidity including long COVID and mental health conditions, and how integrated care can be provided for that, as well as suicide prevention. She led 10 RCTs, one of them a placebo controlled trial, and developed several ehealth interventions and decision supports for clinicians in treatment of complex disorders in the interface of somatic and psychiatric conditions. She conducts epidemiological studies in general population and clinical cohorts including UK Biobank and CPRD exploring risk factors for development of mental disorders in chronic pain and in long COVID. At the University of York, she started and led the Translational Research into the Interface of Physical and Mental Health research theme. Follow Christina’s achievements

Projects

Earlier research

Christina's projects include the first trials to date of psychiatric consultation and collaborative care in the Netherlands.

She collaborated in several EU Sanco and FP7 funded research projects aimed at suicide prevention, the European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) and Optimizing Suicide Prevention programs and their Implementation in Europe (OSPI). She acquired funding for and led a regional suicide prevention project in the Netherlands, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development: Suicide Prevention by Monitoring and Collaborative Care (SuPreMoCol), from October 2016 until 2021. The results of this project were promising with a reduction of 21% in suicides during the project.  

She was involved in agenda setting for mental health research at European level, in the context of ROAMER, an EU FP7 funded project, and on behalf of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine.

Christina was UK National Co-ordinator for the International Survey of Liaison Psychiatry and Covid, together with Dr Lee of the University of Exeter.  

Christina led the project Research priority setting for Medically Not Yet Explained Symptoms (MNYES) in an Anglo-Dutch partnership with the James Lind Association. This project started December 2019 and ended in 2021, establishing research priorities in the domain of MNYES from the perspective of patients, carers and clinicians in the UK and in the Netherlands.

Research group(s)

• Mental Health and Addictions Research Group (MHARG) at the University of York’s Department of Health Sciences
• York Biomedical Research Institute

Publications

Full publications list

• Christina van der Feltz - Cornelis's publications

Christina (co-)authored over 325 international and national articles on research, guidelines and teaching, book chapters and a monograph, with currently 241 Web of Science citations (for other papers, see google scholar profile). Her original papers and review papers have been cited over 12729 times, including five highly cited articles in WoS in 2022, one WoS highly cited in 2020, one WoS highly cited in 2018, and one WoS Top Paper in 2015. She is listed among the Top 3% scientists in medical and health sciences/psychiatry in the World among the scientists in the AD Scientific Index. Her current Web of Science SCI H-index is 47, and Google Scholar H-Index 58.

External activities

Overview

Christina's external activities are, amongst others:

Memberships

An International Distinguished Fellowship was awarded to Christina to join an elite group of psychiatrists with this honorary distinction who continue to make significant contributions to the field of psychiatry at American Psychiatric Association (APA) (2023).

Invited talks and conferences

Inaugural Address

• February 13th, 2020 Christina gave her inaugural address at the University of York: “Stressed out? Stress, Work Stress and Physical Symptoms.”

Media coverage

• February 11^th 2021: Christina interviewed Stephen Fry on the topic of mental health and student mental health in the context of the York unlimited campaign.