Rate My Professor Bess Kew

Bess Kew serves as a Research Assistant in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch, within the Division of Health Sciences. She completed her Master of Science degree at the University of Otago in 2023. Her MSc thesis, "Symptom overlap between Major Depressive Episodes and Borderline Personality Disorder: An exploratory network analysis," investigated symptom overlaps between these disorders using network analysis methods.

Kew has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed publications focusing on psychiatric conditions and treatments. As lead author, she published "Symptom Overlap Between Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Network Analysis" in Personality and Mental Health in 2025 (PMID: 40260579). This study pooled data from 548 participants across four clinical trials conducted between 1994 and 2013 at the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand. Participants were diagnosed with current major depression (as part of major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder) or borderline personality disorder. In 2023, she co-authored the systematic review "Ketamine and psychotherapy for the treatment of psychiatric disorders: systematic review" in BJPsych Open (PMID: 37128856), which has received 45 citations. Other contributions include "The changing doctor-patient relationship in psychiatry: observations on recent trends in autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, gender dysphoria and mental distress" in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2025 (PMID: 39629615), and "Investigation of a broad-spectrum micronutrient formulation as a possible precipitant of pharmacokinetic micronutrient-drug interactions" in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology in 2025 (PMID: 39993734). In 2022, she was part of the review team for a PROSPERO-registered systematic review on ketamine and psychotherapy (CRD42022318120). Her work supports the department's research on novel treatments for depression and related disorders, including ketamine interventions.