Panos Kasteridis, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Health Economics
Panos Kasteridis is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics at University of York. He holds a PhD and a MA in Economics from the University of Tennessee.
He is trained as an applied micro-econometrician and he has expertise in applying sophisticated statistical techniques to analyse large and complex healthcare datasets.
email: panos.kasteridis@york.ac.uk
Our 60-second interview with Panos:
What do you do in the field of mental health?
My work so far in the field of mental health spans three areas: a) the impact of primary care quality on mental health, b) the interaction between physical and mental health and c) antipsychotic polypharmacy and non-adherence to psychotropic medication.
What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?
From the perspective of a health economist, research in mental health entails similar analytical challenges and comparable skills with research in other areas of health economics. In that regard, the reward associated with intellectually challenging yourself is not very different from that enjoyed from researching other areas. However, the purpose of the research makes work in this field more rewarding for me. Patients with mental health issues face the most significant challenges to navigate the healthcare system. Doing research that can inform policy and ultimately help these patients is the most rewarding part of the work.
What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?
Although there is huge improvement in accessing routine mental health data, this data still has more imperfections than the data for physical conditions. In addition, some important aspects of mental health such as stigma are difficult to measure.
What impact do you hope your work is having- or can potentially have?
My work on physical health checks for people with serious mental illness had an impact on policymakers. We engaged in discussions with NHSE and NICE as our work fed into their work on reinstating the financial incentives for some of the physical health checks conducted in primary care. In addition, our work could potentially help policymakers develop incentives that target specific patient groups to help reduce health inequalities.
Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?
I ‘self-prescribe’ small or generous doses of art, music, and literature to balance the pressures of work and life.