Dr. Annie Swanepoel
Biography
Dr Annie Swanepoel is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist with broad clinical experience across general outpatient, low-secure inpatient, and specialist learning disability CAMHS settings. She holds a CCT in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and currently works with North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT), supporting children with severe to profound intellectual disability and comorbid mental health conditions, and previously served as Clinical Director for CAMHS at Potters Bar Low Secure Adolescent Unit.
Dr Swanepoel holds the Cardiff University Bond Solon Expert Witness Certificate in both Civil Law (2021) and Family Law (2024). She has prepared more than eighty medico-legal reports, predominantly for family court proceedings, with additional reports for civil and criminal cases. She has given oral evidence and been cross-examined in court both in person and remotely. Her reports cover psychiatric and neurodevelopmental assessments of children and adolescents, capacity and competence assessments, assessment of developmental trauma, and single joint expert work in Family Court cases. She is particularly skilled at assessing children with neurodevelopmental disorders who have also suffered developmental trauma.
Her clinical expertise spans ADHD, ASD, intellectual disability, PTSD, depression, anxiety, OCD, FASD and challenging behaviour. She holds a Paediatric Neurodisability Diploma and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Dr Swanepoel is a prolific researcher with over fifty peer-reviewed publications and four book chapters, published in journals including World Psychiatry, BJPsych, Annals of Neurology, and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. She holds a PhD in Human Physiology and has an international profile as an invited speaker and as Chair of the World Psychiatric Association’s Evolutionary Psychiatry Section.
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