Welcome back to our ‘In Conversation’ series where we introduce you to the people who make the Hub for Metabolic Psychiatry’s research happen. In this post, meet Dr Dina Farran, a Postdoctoral Researcher based at King’s College London who is working on a project to co-produce and pilot metabolic interventions for people with serious mental illness.

Please share a little bit about yourself.

I’m Dina Farran, originally from Lebanon and now based in London. I hold an MPH and a PhD in applied artificial intelligence from King’s College London (KCL). My doctoral work analysed large-scale electronic health records and built a clinical decision support tool, embedded in the Electronic Patient Journey System (ePJS), to flag stroke risk in mental health services. I’m currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), working within the UKRI Metabolic Psychiatry Hub to co-produce and pilot metabolic interventions for people with serious mental illness. Broadly, my research bridges the gap between physical and mental health and translates evidence into practical improvements in routine care.

Tell us more about your current work.

My project seeks to develop and test metabolic interventions to address the bidirectional relationship between serious mental illness (SMI) and metabolic disorders. We aim to target metabolic dysfunction to improve both psychiatric and physical health, co-designing everything with people with lived experience so it’s feasible, acceptable and effective in real services.

To map the evidence, I’m conducting an umbrella review of metabolic interventions (pharmacological and non-pharmacological) in SMI. In parallel, I’m using the Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) process with people with lived experience, carers and clinicians to agree a Top Ten research agenda for metabolic psychiatry. We then run co-production workshops to adapt and co-design the most promising options (such as ketogenic approaches, GLP-1 medicines, time-restricted eating and structured/intensive exercise etc.) and test them in small feasibility pilots. These pilots assess feasibility, uptake and retention, and look for early changes in mental health and metabolic measures (e.g. symptom severity, weight, glucose and lipid markers).

How did you become interested in your current area of research?

I became interested in this area during my PhD. Working at the interface of mental and physical health made the gap impossible to ignore: people with serious mental illness experience much higher, and often preventable, cardiometabolic risk, contributing to reduced life expectancy. Designing and implementing the ePJS tool showed me how data can change clinical decisions in real time, but it also highlighted what data alone can’t do. If interventions aren’t acceptable or practical for the people who will use them, they don’t stick. That realisation drew me toward lived-experience perspectives: What feels doable? What trade-offs matter? How do services need to adapt?

The UKRI Metabolic Psychiatry Hub was a natural next step, bringing psychiatry, cardiometabolic medicine and lived-experience partners together. My motivation is simple: close the gap between physical and mental health so people with serious mental illness can live longer, healthier lives.

What have you found the most interesting aspect of your work?

What I find most interesting is the translational aspect, watching ideas move from papers and datasets into tools and interventions that change care. I find co-production very interesting: bringing people with lived experience, carers, clinicians, and researchers into the same room, gathering feedback at each step, and seeing how those insights reshape the design so it actually works in practice.

I also love the interdisciplinary nature, psychiatry, cardiometabolic medicine, and implementation, because that mix is what turns a good concept into something usable and sustainable.

What do you anticipate will be the major implications of this project/area of research?

I anticipate this work will help shift routine mental health care towards integrated metabolic-mental health support. In practice, that means offering co-produced, low-burden options within existing pathways rather than as bolt-ons. By running small feasibility pilots and tracking both mental and metabolic outcomes, we can identify what works, for whom, and how to sustain it. The outputs will be clearer care pathways, practical service toolkits (workflows, training, patient materials), and stronger cases for commissioners to fund scale-up. Over time, this area of research should enable more personalised and equitable care, reduce preventable cardiometabolic complications, and narrow the life-expectancy gap for people living with serious mental illness.

In Conversation with Dr Dina Farran

In Conversation with Elchin Asgarov