David M. Clark, one of the UK’s leading figures in the research and treatment of anxiety disorders, is Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. He is well-known for his pioneering work on the understanding and psychological treatment of anxiety disorders, especially panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, health anxiety and PTSD. He has also focused on how to disseminate effective psychological treatments within the English and international healthcare systems. He is an architect of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) program. He has received Distinguished Scientist / Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British, Canadian, Dutch and American Psychological Associations. The latter described his work as “pure genius with a real-world application”.

Dr. Clark’s research mainly focuses on cognitive approaches to the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders. His team uses a closely integrated programme of experimental and clinical studies. The general strategy has been to: (i) use clinical interviews and cognitive psychology paradigms to identify the core cognitive abnormality in an anxiety disorder; (ii) to construct a theoretical account which explains why the cognitive abnormality does not self-correct; (iii) test the hypothesised maintaining factors in rigorous experimental studies; (iv) develop specialised cognitive treatments which aim to reverse the maintaining factors; (v) test the efficacy of the treatments in randomised controlled trials.

The research has led to the development of new and effective cognitive therapy programmes for three different anxiety disorders: panic disorder, social phobia and posttraumatic stress disorder, each of which are recommended first line treatment options in current NICE guidelines.