Rate My Professor Najma Siddiqi

Najma Siddiqi is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of York, in a joint appointment with the Department of Health Sciences and the Hull York Medical School, where she serves as a member of the Centre for Health and Population Sciences. She holds qualifications including MBChB from the University of Birmingham, MRCP, MRCPsych, and PhD from the University of Leeds. Previously recognized as a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, she now leads the Mental Health and Addiction research group within the Department of Health Sciences. Her research specializations encompass physical and mental illness comorbidity, with particular emphasis on diabetes in severe mental illness via the DIAMONDS programme (Diabetes and Mental Illness Improving Services and Outcomes), funded by NIHR Yorkshire & Humber CLAHRC, and delirium prevention in care homes through projects such as the PITSTOP study, a pilot cluster randomised trial funded by NIHR Research for Patient Benefit. Additional focuses include the development and validation of the 4AT delirium triage tool (NIHR HTA), investigation of the Delirium Observation Screening Scale for care home staff (NIHR Research for Patient Benefit), and culturally appropriate mental health interventions for black and minority ethnic populations, exemplified by the ROSHNI-D trial for postnatal depression in British mothers of South Asian origin (NIHR HTA).

She maintains an honorary appointment with Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, leading the development of a primary care liaison psychiatry service. Her career includes supervision of PhD students on topics such as partnership working between mental health services and faith healers, and diabetes and severe mental illness in South Asians. Siddiqi contributes to major NIHR initiatives like the IMPACT Centre for mental and physical health comorbidity in South Asia, SCIMITAR-SA trial for smoking cessation in people with severe mental illness, and evidence synthesis including the Cochrane review of interventions to prevent delirium in hospitalised non-ICU patients. With 142 research outputs documented in the York Research Database, her work advances complex intervention design, trial evaluation, applied global health research, and multimorbidity management in mental health, influencing clinical practice and policy in psychiatry.