Thorsten Barnhofer

I am a research clinical psychologist. I received my PhD from the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität, Münster, Germany, where I also earned my qualification as a cognitive-behavioural therapist, the German equivalent to the English Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. My training in mindfulness-based interventions has included an internship at the Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn, numerous teaching retreats with leading Western and Eastern practitioners, and has benefited from almost a decade of work in the group of one of the founders of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mark Williams.

I have been involved in research on mindfulness-based interventions from an early stage of their development. I worked at the University of Oxford from 2003 until 2012 as part of a Wellcome Trust-funded team investigating the use of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for highly vulnerable patients, and independently as a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Institute Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, from 2012 until 2013. A prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation allowed me to conduct research into the neural mechanisms of mindfulness training at the Freie Universität Berlin from 2013 until 2015. From 2015 until 2018, I worked as an associate professor at the Mood Disorders Centre, University of Exeter, where I led the training programmes in mindfulness-based interventions. Since 2018, I am a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Surrey.

I have a longstanding interest in understanding the psychological and biological mechanisms underlying depression and how best to address them using psychological interventions. The focus of my research is on the use of mindfulness-based interventions, and mindfulness training more specifically, to bring about sustainable changes in those who are most vulnerable. Previous work I have been involved in has shown how mindfulness training can help patients with highly recurrent and severe histories of depression (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2014, 2015). The psychotherapeutic approach of this work is described in the book, Mindfulness and the Transformation of Despair, published by Guildford Press.

Based on a psychobiological perspective that acknowledges common mechanisms underlying depression and related physical and neurodegenerative disorders, my current work investigates the use of mindfulness approaches for depression across the lifespan. Besides studies aimed at understanding the mechanisms of mindfulness training in order to better harness what might be a unique potential for reversing vulnerabilities (Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 2019), I am currently involved in intervention research to test the use of mindfulness-based approaches in adolescents suffering from anxiety and depression and in elderly people, as a means of reducing risk for dementia.

The field of mindfulness research combines insights from ancient wisdom traditions with knowledge accumulated through modern science. As our understanding of the role of mind-body interactions in physical and mental health increases, mindfulness-based interventions are becoming more and more relevant. A recent special issue on mindfulness in Current Opinions in Psychology, which I have edited together with colleagues Amit Bernstein and David Vago, provides a comprehensive map of this rapidly growing and exciting field.