Inaugural Lecture Series – Professor Brian McGuire’s

“Online therapies for people with chronic health conditions: Prospects and challenges.”

In this talk, Prof. Brian McGuire from School of Psychology will describe the growing use of internet-based psychological therapies to help people with chronic health conditions to cope and adapt to their conditions.  He will describe the research carried out in his group to help people with conditions such as chronic muscular pain and chronic headache, chronic fatigue following cancer, multiple sclerosis and other chronic conditions. His talk will describe the potential benefits of these therapies as well some of the challenges in making them more widely available.

Brian McGuire is a Professor of Clinical Psychology. He is a graduate of NUI Galway and has also completed a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology (Sydney), a Diploma in Criminology (Sydney), a Diploma in Health Science (Clinical Teaching, NUI Galway) and a PhD in clinical psychology (Sydney). He worked initially as a research psychologist in brain injury rehabilitation in London. He then moved to Sydney where he spent the next 10 years lecturing in psychology at several universities and working as a clinical psychologist. His clinical work was initially in the area of learning disability and challenging behaviour, before he moved into private practice where his work focused on medicolegal assessment and the rehabilitation of persons with chronic pain, acquired brain impairment, and those recovering from work and motor accidents. It was in that context that his interest in symptom magnification and malingering developed and he completed his PhD in that area. After leaving Australia, Brian was Consultant Clinical Psychologist in brain injury rehabilitation where he co-ordinated the clinical services of several in-patient rehabilitation units in the north of England. After returning to Ireland, Brian worked with the Galway Association learning disability service. He joined NUI, Galway in 2003 and was the Director of the Doctor of Psychological Science programme in Clinical Psychology until 2014 when he took up his post as HRB Research Leader in Population Health.  In addition, he is Director of the Doctor of Psychological Science for Qualified Clinicians and Joint Director of the Centre for Pain Research.