Michael Sharpe (psychiatrist)

Michael Sharpe is a British psychiatrist and academic, specialising in the psychiatric aspects of medical illness. He is an Emeritus Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Saint Cross College, Oxford. From 1997 to 2011, he was Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Sharpe was the elected President of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine for 2022-2023.

Work
While a Professor at Oxford, Sharpe ran a research programme to develop and evaluate psychiatric treatments for medically ill patients.

Sharpe is best known as a co-author on the controversial PACE trial which found exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy to be “moderately effective” treatments for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

In 2021 he controversially gave a presentation on secondary covid 19 impacts to Swiss Re in which he suggested that Long COVID was partly caused by psychological and social factors such as reportage by the Guardian columnist George Monbiot.

Sharpe's recent work is on depression in people with cancer and the mental health of elderly inpatients.

Honours
In 2009, he was named Psychiatric Academic of the Year by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In 2014, he was named Psychiatrist of the Year by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.