DrDavid Erritzoe

Dr. David Erritzoe, MD, PhD, MRCPsych, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He holds a Clinical Associate Professorship in Psychopharmacology and Psychiatry in Imperial's Division of Psychiatry, Dpt of Brain Sciences.

At Imperial’s Hammersmith Hospital campus, he heads the Centre for Psychedelic Research (CPR), and at St Charles Hospital campus he sat up (in 2021) and is Director of the NHS-based CNWL-Imperial Psychopharmacology and Psychedelic Research Clinic, the CIPPRes Clinic. Across these two sites, David - together with his CPR team and colleagues from CNWL -  runs experimental neuroscience-focused studies, clinical trials, and clinical service pilots – with a focus on novel interventions in psychiatry.   

Following training in neuroreceptor PET imaging at Columbia University in New York in 2002/03, he undertook a PhD at NRU at University Hospital Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. In 2009 he moved to London to conduct psychopharmacological research at Imperial College and to undergo clinical residency training in general adult psychiatry. He received his General Medical Council license in 2009 and became a member of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2016, and achieved CCT Consultant Psychiatrist status in 2019. 

On the academic side, David leads a research programme with lab-based multi-modal (PET-MRI-EEG) brain imaging studies, often using pharmacological challenges, focusing both on molecular (e.g. serotonin/dopamine/opiate/glutamate neurotransmission and synaptic density, assessed with PET and MRS) and functional (e.g. connectivity with fMRI) and electrophysiological (e.g. neuroplasticity paradigms and neurocomplexity measures with EEG).

A central focus of his research is the neuromechanisms and therapeutic effects of MDMA, ketamine and classic psychedelics (i.e. psilocybin, DMT, 5MEO-DMT). Clinical conditions that he and the team are studying with psychedelic therapy include Depression, OCD, Anorexia Nervosa and Chronic Pain, and Opioid Use Disorder and Gambling Disorder. 

On the clinical side, David has together with CNWL and international colleagues launched a ketamine therapy pilot program in the CIPPRes Clinic at St Charles. The model being piloted is inspired by Montreal Model and uses an integrative biomedical-psychedelic approach to use ketamine therapy for (treatment-resistant) depression, and is named “CIM-KeT” ( = CNWL-Imperial-Montreal Ketamine Therapy).

David supervises and mentors 15 PhD students and post-docs, is topic lead in psychiatry at Imperial’s Medical School, co-leads the academic teaching program in CNWL, whilst also teaching on Imperial's MSc and BSc neuroscience programs as well as on a range of national and international training courses.

David and his team closely collaborate with other research labs at Imperial, namely the addiction team in the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit (Dr Paterson), the neurostimulation team (Dr Grosman), and the Hashemi lab.

David is a highly cited scientist (top 0.1% globally in 2025, Clarivate), and in 2025 received Imperial’s President Award for Excellence in Research, and his team has received several additional awards in recent years. David and his team have been awarded competitive grant & fellowship funding, hereunder from MRC/UKRI, NIHR and Welcome Trust. David has published 150+ scientic papers, contributed to 7 books (incl author of 6 book chapters), an per Dec 2025 has a Scopus h-index of 54 and 19k+ citations.