Changing Disorders: The Psychosis–OCD Transition Under Clozapine

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Emilio Fernandez-Egea, University of Cambridge
• Friday 20 February 2026, 16:30-18:00
• Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Psychology Reception.

I have worked with people diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychosis for more than 25 years, and since 2012 I have led the treatment-resistant schizophrenia programme in Cambridge. Yet a decade ago I began to notice a striking shift in the clinical work. Increasingly, my time in the clozapine clinic was spent addressing intrusive thoughts and excessive checking rather than hallucinations or delusions. I began to screen every patient systematically. To my surprise, more than a third met criteria for obsessive–compulsive disorder. How could a hallucinatory–delusional syndrome evolve into what looked like a textbook OCD case? In this talk, I will present the work that followed this observation: epidemiological studies showing the scale and pattern of clozapine-related obsessive–compulsive symptoms; multilevel clinical models demonstrating how psychosis, depression, and clozapine dose interact to transform the psychopathology; and cognitive experiments revealing a distinctive form of dysfunctional checking that differs from both classical OCD and schizophrenia without OCS . These findings, developed in collaboration with Professor Trevor Robbins and colleagues, might represent an opportunity to bring cognitive neuroscience into clinical practice. I will close by outlining the conceptual implications and the future research aimed at understanding this transition and improving clinical care for patients.

This talk is part of the Zangwill Club series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Biology
• Cambridge Forum of Science and Humanities
• Cambridge Language Sciences
• Cambridge Neuroscience Seminars
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Department of Psychiatry talks stream
• Featured lists
• Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology
• Guy Emerson's list
• Interested Talks
• Life Science
• Life Sciences
• Neuroscience
• Neuroscience Seminars
• Neuroscience Seminars
• Psychology talks and events
• Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine
• Yishu's list
• Zangwill Club
• dh539
• dh539
• my List

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.