GROUNDWORK ROOTED IN SCIENCE
ABOUT THIS PAGE
Before I trained as a therapist, I was (and still am) a scientist. My background is in biopsychology; the study of how biology shapes the mind, with my own research focused on psychiatric genetics. While this work lives alongside rather than inside the therapy room, it quietly informs how I think about the mind, the body, and what it means to heal. On this page, you'll find short notes on biological topics I find useful or interesting, alongside my own research portfolio.
What is biopsychology?
The science of how body and mind shape each other — and the field that underpins my work. This page is all about science around mental health.
NOTES
Body and mind, in conversation
Physical and mental health aren't separate systems — they're in constant dialogue.
What is psychiatric genetics?
How our genes influence mental health — and the honest answer to "is it hereditary?"
How the brain keeps changing
The brain keeps changing, learning, & adapting. Also known as neuroplasticity. Its vital to our approach of mental health in the modern world.
BEHIND THE WORK
My research sits in the biology of mental health. I'm currently completing a PhD in psychological medicine, with earlier work in the molecular genetics of mental health through an MRes in Biomedical Sciences, and a background in molecular biology and culture before that.
The questions that drew me to this field are the same ones that drew me to therapy: what contributes to the way we are, and what does it mean to change? Genetics gives one set of answers. Therapy gives another. Both matter. Which is why I do both.
Questions I've worked on
A selection of academic work in psychiatric genetics and related fields.
A note before you read on. This research is pre-clinical, which means that it is early-stage work that asks how biological systems might relate to mental and physical health, not what to do about it. Each study is a small piece of a much larger puzzle, highly contextual, and a stepping stone toward understanding the mechanisms underneath. Findings like these are topical and worth thinking about — but they don't directly change day-to-day life for most people, and I'd be cautious of anyone who told you otherwise.
Could weight-loss drugs affect mental health?
GLP-1 receptor agonists — the class of drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy — are now widely used for type 2 diabetes and obesity, and there's been growing public discussion about whether they also affect mood, impulsivity, or other aspects of mental health.
In this paper, we looked at natural genetic variation in the GLP-1 receptor gene across people from different ancestries, to see whether it might be a route through which these drugs influence mental health. The gene's effects on metabolic traits — body weight, blood pressure, diabetes — were consistent across ancestries. Its effects on mental health traits were not. The implication: any behavioural changes people notice on GLP-1 drugs are probably not working directly through the receptor itself. Something else is going on, and it's worth finding out what — especially in a culture where weight already carries so much shame.
Hayman, M. M. E., Jones, W., Aman, A., Ward, J., Anderson, J., Lyall, D. M., Pell, J. P., Sattar, N., Welsh, P., & Strawbridge, R. J. (2025). Association of GLP1R locus with mental ill-health endophenotypes and cardiometabolic traits: A trans-ancestry study in UK Biobank. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 27(4), 1845–1858. https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.16178
Is inflammation the thread between mental and physical illness?
The short answer is yes, but how?
Severe mental ill-health and cardiometabolic disease — things like high blood pressure, obesity, and type 2 diabetes — often travel together, and we don't fully understand why. In this paper, we explored a complex region of the genome best known for its role in immunity (the HLA/MHC locus) and found evidence that it influences both.
Some of the same genetic signals appear to shape risk for mood instability, anhedonia, and neuroticism and risk for cardiovascular and metabolic conditions — pointing to inflammation as a possible shared mechanism underneath. It's part of a growing picture that the boundary between "mental" and "physical" illness is more porous than we tend to treat it.
Hayman, M. M. E.*, Nicolson, K.*, Anderson, J., Cullen, B., Cavanagh, J., Ferguson, L. D., Graham, N., Ho, F. K., Lyall, D. M., Lyall, L., Parra Soto, S., Pell, J. P., Pellicori, P., Siebert, S., Welsh, P., Ward, J., & Strawbridge, R. J. (2023). Genetic architecture of the HLA/MHC locus in cardiometabolic disease, severe mental illness, and related traits. Research Square (preprint). https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2488695/v1 *Joint first authors.