Dr Rob Agnew

Hey, thanks for reading my profile. I have worked in over 40 services in the NHS, private and voluntary/charitable sectors. Having qualified from UCL in 2008 as a clinical psychologist, I have spent the last 17 years working in brain injury, specialist adolescent forensics, psychiatry, autism, ADHD, neuropsychiatry, challenging behaviour/neurobehaviour, OCD/BDD and deliberate self harm/personality services. I'm formerly an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and sat as Chair of their Section of Sexualities until 2024. I was also a member of their Practice Guidelines Review Group and the Mental Capacity Advisory Group. I have undertaken high profile medico-legal cases since 2012 and am a listed expert on the General Medical Council's rosta of experts.

​Unfortunately in 2024 my visibility as a gay psychologist drew targeted attention from anti-LGBTQ+ psychologists and members of the public  who made endless complaints about my analysis of important LGBTQ+ issues. This was in the context of a great deal of untrue information and bullying being posted on social media. As a result, I received a minor reprimand from the BPS, which I felt was unjust  (please feel free to read the posts on LinkedIn that were the substance of the complaint, I left all of them up so that people can make their own mind up). While this was going on, I was also subjected to a string of complaints to the legal regulator, the HCPC. In contrast to the BPS, the HCPC have always thrown out every complaint they have ever had about me. This helped me to realise that possibly the internal politics and interpretive biases of psychologist members  of the BPS would put me at risk of further harassment and censorship. As I could not fulfil my role for them as their  chair of Section of Sexualities safely, I chose to step down and leave.   That summer I founded the Psychological Society for Inclusive Intersectional and Queer Communities (PSIIQC). Since last year I have been building a psychological society that understands the risks of being a publicly accessible LGBTQ+ professional with a great team of co-founders. 

Clinically I specialise in neurodiversity and neuroaffirmative practice (ADHD and autism), fatigue, work performance, complex or treatment resistant OCD, BDD, anxiety, perfectionism and head injury/neuropsychology. I see both individuals and couples, and I work online only using Zoom. I offer diagnosis for autism and ADHD, and I have a prescription partnership with a provider that prioritises my referrals and can usually begin meds within 2 to 3 weeks. Where I feel it may be effective I do also see adolescents, children and family's. I tend not to offer diagnosis to children as I believe that a child, who is still acquiring and developing skills at highly varying rate, should be assessed by a full multidisciplinary team. This is an expense beyond even the most well resourced parents, and the NHS is an incontestable expert organisation in this type of provision.

Recently I have contributed a chapter 'Queering Neuropsychology' to the text book 'Systemic Approaches to Brain Injury Treatment: Navigating Contemporary Practice' (Routledge, 2022) and contributed to British Psychological Society media and publications. I am currently writing two other chapters on ADHD and gender and sexuality diversity for psychology text books. I frequently teach in university masters and doctoral students in CBT and counselling psychology, and on undergraduate psychology courses.

As a gay cis-gender man, and a proud trans, non-binary and intersex ally, I interact regularly with the LGTBQ+ communities. I support the decolonising psychology movement, and I have adjacent interests in the intersections of empiricism, epistemology, social constructionism, politics, sociology, anthropology, religion and psychology. I am a trained singer and am training to be a singing teacher, and I am a countertenor/upper tenor in the London Gay Men's Chorus. 

I offer a free introductory Zoom call for 15 minutes if you're thinking of doing some work with me. I'm quite informal, and I think I do well with people who are nervous of therapy or who might not have had  great experiences. I have a profile on Doctify which can be found at https://www.doctify.com/uk/specialist/dr-rob-agnew