About
Dr Christopher Garrett
MBBS MSc (Distinction) PhD FRCP MRCPsych
Chris Garrett is a consultant psychiatrist specialising in diabetes psychiatry at Barts Health NHS Trust and East London Foundation Trust.
His clinical and research work focuses on people experiencing high-risk diabetes outcomes, particularly recurrent diabetic ketoacidosis and persistent severe hyperglycaemia.
Background
Chris qualified from Barts and The Royal London Medical School in 2002.
He initially trained in medicine before moving into psychiatry, subsequently completing higher specialist training in psychiatry and a Master's degree in psychotherapeutic practice.
He later worked as a research fellow in the Diabetes and Mental Health Research Group at King's College London and completed a PhD examining the psychopathology of recurrent diabetic ketoacidosis.
He became a consultant in diabetes psychiatry at Barts Health and East London NHS Foundation Trust in 2019.
His clinical work has subsequently focused on developing psychiatric and psychotherapeutic approaches for people experiencing recurrent DKA and other high-risk diabetes outcomes.
Diabetes psychiatry
The phrase “diabetes psychiatry” arose accidentally.
In 2014, Chris misheard colleagues discussing the interaction between diabetes and psychiatry.
The phrase stayed with him because it seemed to describe something that existing terminology did not quite capture:
not psychiatry alongside diabetes, but a clinical discipline concerned with understanding and treating the interaction between the two.
Over the subsequent decade, clinical and research work with people experiencing high-risk diabetes outcomes has led to a more explicit model of what diabetes psychiatry might involve.
At its centre is the integration of diabetes medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy within a single clinical formulation directed towards improving physical health.
Clinical and research lineage
This work did not develop in isolation.
It owes a particular debt to the work of Professor Khalida Ismail and colleagues at King's College London, whose clinical and research programme has helped establish the importance of integrating diabetes care with psychiatry, psychology and social intervention. These include large type 2 diabetes population studies
Chris worked within Professor Ismail's Mental Health and Diabetes Research Group, where his research on recurrent DKA developed within this wider programme.
The approach described on this website builds on that foundation while concentrating particularly on high-risk diabetes, psychiatric case finding from physical-health outcomes, psychotherapeutic formulation and longitudinal specialist intervention.
Professor Khalida Ismail’s KCL Webpage
Psychotherapeutic Case-Management for High-Risk Diabetes
Chris has developed Psychotherapeutic Case-Management for High-Risk Diabetes (PCMHRD) through his clinical work.
PCMHRD combines psychiatric treatment, psychotherapeutic formulation, detailed understanding of diabetes, practical case-management and longitudinal continuity, with physical-health outcomes used to evaluate whether intervention is changing the trajectory.
PCMHRD is one developing model within diabetes psychiatry.
It is not intended to define the field.
Why this website exists
This website brings together clinical frameworks, practical resources, research and developing ideas from this work.
Its purpose is to make the approach sufficiently explicit that it can be:
used • tested • challenged • adapted • developed by others