Ilenia is the Consultant Psychiatrist and clinical lead for the National Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Unit at South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust. She has extensive experience treating and researching OCD and related disorders.

Chiara Toschi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, where she studies the neural circuits underlying decision-making. Her research is driven by a deep passion for mental health and a desire to understand the brain mechanisms behind maladaptive behaviours. This work became profoundly personal to her during the pandemic, when she developed OCD. […]

Katherine is a comms strategist and mental health advocate, currently working for the University of Cambridge. She has lived with OCD since studying at university, but has only recently begun formal treatment for it.

Ana Maria is a cognitive neuroscientist, passionate about understanding the causes of OCD and developing personalised treatments. She works part-time as Fundraising and Communications Officer at Orchard and part-time as an OCD researcher, joining patient involvement and academic work. Ana Maria is always open to new research ideas, so do contact her!

Pete started out as a business writer and editor before moving into healthcare communications and later the tech start-up world. He was a founding team member of Raremark (Xperiome) and held numerous roles in its journey from rare disease start-up to scale-up. Pete lives with several chronic conditions, including lifelong undiagnosed OCD.

Margherita works for Orchard OCD and manages their communications and fundraising. She experienced severe OCD during her adolescence and young adulthood. She is passionate about Orchard’s work to collaborate closely with interdisciplinary professionals and progress in developing new and better treatments for patients suffering from OCD. If you have any communications or fundraising queries, please […]

We have been awarded £10,000 from the National Lottery Awards for All scheme to fund part of our OCD video series. We are filming this series in 2023. A huge thank you to the National Lottery for making this happen.

We are pleased to have received funding from the Hospital Saturday Fund towards our OCD patient registry. The Hospital Saturday Fund is a registered charity whose aims are to provide assistance for registered health charities, hospices, medical organisations and individuals with a medical condition or disability.

Tracy works in local government in a strategy and policy team. She has lived with OCD for over 30 years and continues to learn about how this can impact life, and how it can be tackled, from her own experiences and those of other people. Tracy wants to support the work to find new treatments […]

We are thankful to Faiz for his continuous help and suggestions. Faiz’s background is in medical research and the pharmaceutical sector. He has practical experience of launching and publicising the work of non-profit organisations, especially in the field of healthcare and education. Faiz has a PhD. in Immunopharmacology from St. Thomas’ Hospital London.

We are pleased to be part of the Cambridge Social Ventures programme in the Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/social-innovation/cambridge-social-ventures/

Orchard OCD is very pleased to be receiving funding from the Bally’s Foundation for a two-year project to build an international registry of OCD patients. Registries are crucially important for medical research as they can accelerate recruitment into clinical trials of potential treatments and increase our understanding of a disorder such as OCD by asking […]