In this interview, Dr Addison speaks about his role in the Buckinghamshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Specialist Neurodivergent Support Team focusing on supporting neurodivergent young people, particularly those experiencing anxiety and distress that can be difficult to interpret.  

He discusses his work across clinical care, leadership, and research, including leading involvement in the SATURN trial on ADHD treatments and contributing to a forthcoming book on ADHD and trauma.  

Dr Addison also reflects on his career journey, motivation to pursue meaningful and engaging work, and the importance of supportive colleagues and shared purpose in delivering challenging mental health care. 

 Tell us about yourself, and what attracted you to working at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust? 

I am a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist working in Buckinghamshire CAMHS and have been part of their neurodevelopmental service for the last 7 years. I moved to Oxford Health from Newcastle for what I intended to be a few years as part of my training, but it has been almost 15 years now. I am still here as the work is interesting, my colleagues are great, and I can spend time exploring the Chiltern Hills on weekends. 

What is the focus of the work in your department? 

Our neurodevelopmental service provides assessments for autism and ADHD, runs an ADHD clinic, and provides specialist mental health input for young people who find it difficult to access usual CAMHS interventions due to their neurodivergence. I work mostly in the latter part of the service; clinically we see neurodivergent young people with a wide range of needs, though often it is a case of unpicking the different ways they express anxiety and distress. 

 What does a day in your current job look like? What are you currently working on? 

My days tend to be quite varied, which suits me well. Clinically I offer psychiatric assessments and reviews alongside our wider team, but I also have a management role as one of the Medical Leads for Buckinghamshire CAMHS. We are keen to embed research into our service and one of my current roles is being the Principal Investigator at Oxford Health for the SATURN trial which is comparing the effectiveness of different medications in young people with ADHD and tics. It has been interesting being involved in research that will have a direct impact on how clinicians, myself included, approach ADHD treatment. 

I am also contributing to a book titled ‘Co-occurring ADHD and traumatic stress in children and adolescents’. The aim is to provide clinicians and systems with advice on how to carry out ADHD assessments for children and young people who have experienced trauma and how interventions and treatments for this group may need to look different. It’s due out in 2027 so keep an eye out! 

How did you get to where you are today? 

I have never had a grand plan about what I wanted to do. I studied medicine because being a doctor felt like a tangible and useful thing to do. I don’t come from a medical family, but my brother had heart surgery as a child, and I think this probably contributed to the idea.  

I definitely don’t have the attention span to be a surgeon and was always more interested in people’s stories and how they told them, so I decided to train in psychiatry. I hadn’t considered being a child and adolescent psychiatrist until I did a 6-month placement as a core trainee and found I really enjoyed the variety and therapeutic feel of it, so decided to pursue that.  

Essentially, I have based my career on trying to find interesting and meaningful things to do, which I think is as good a plan as any and seems to have worked out ok. 

Who or what inspires you? 

It is inspiring to work with colleagues who share a common purpose and values. I think it speaks to the value of what we do that people continue to turn up and do difficult and emotionally demanding work in a system that can sometimes feel like it works against them and manage to keep their sense of humour whilst doing it. 

If you were not in your job currently, what would you like to be doing? 

I love spending time outdoors, particularly in the mountains. I try to get to the Lake District as often as I can and I spend a week a year hiking between mountain huts in Europe. I think if I couldn’t be a psychiatrist then I would work as a mountain guide.