Naomi Tromans

I am a DPhil Candidate and Research Assistant in the Cognitive and Behavioural Approaches to Mental Health in Young People (CAMY) group, led by Dr. Eleanor Leigh, which sits within the wider TOPIC group, and focuses on research to better understand and treat social anxiety disorder in children and adolescents.

My DPhil project focused on understanding self-focused attention, a trans-diagnostic mechanism which has been suggested to be involved in many mental health conditions, and how it is involved in Social Anxiety Disorder and Body Dysmorphic Disorder in young people. Self-focused attention is thought of as an intense and inappropriate attentional allocation to cues and signals relating to the self/which are internally generated. In mental health disorders this has been suggested to keep those disorders going by making reinforcing negative beliefs about those aspects of the self. My project aims to better conceptualise the breadth and limits of what we can class as self-focused attention through the lens of Social Anxiety Disorder and Body Dysmorphic Disorder, its role in the development and maintenance of each disorder, as well as how it may be better targeted trans-diagnostically.

I also work as a Research Assistant on the Go-OSCA Trial, a clinical trial being run by Eleanor Leigh to test the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a new, digital treatment for adolescent Social Anxiety Disorder (OSCA) compared to Treatment as Usual as delivered in NHS services.

I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford, focusing on developmental and clinical psychology in my final year.

More broadly, I am interested in the understanding of the development and maintenance of various disorders in young people, and how interventions may be better targeted and individualised.