Ulrike Schmidt is Professor of Eating Disorders at King’s College London. Her research spans the spectrum of eating disorders and their biopsychosocial underpinnings. She was the first to introduce guided self-help interventions for bulimic eating disorders, translating specialist treatment into scalable formats. This approach is now recommended by NICE as a first-line treatment. She also led the development of MANTRA, the first anorexia-specific psychotherapy for adults, which is now also NICE-recommended. She has also developed FREED, an evidence-based early intervention programme which transforms young people’s lives, with dramatic improvements in outcomes and large cost-savings. FREED was adopted for national roll-out in the NHS.
Professor Schmidt has contributed to national and international policy initiatives, and has appeared as an expert witness before a parliamentary group, highlighting the need for more eating disorders research funding, informing their 2021 report.