Professor Ilana Crome
Emerita Professor of Addiction Psychiatry, Keele University
Speaker's biography
Ilana Crome is Emerita Professor of Addiction Psychiatry at Keele University, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust and Visiting Professor at St George’s University of London.
Professor Crome has experience in providing comprehensive addiction services for all substances across the life cycle. She is currently Chair Trustee of DrugScience. She has played an active role in the addiction field in service development, research, training and policy and has had a number of leadership roles.
She has published extensively. Recent publications include ‘Our invisible addicts’ (2018), a Royal College of Psychiatrists’ report (of which she was co-Chair, editor and author) on older substance misusers. She is lead editor of a book on ‘Substance use and older people’ (2015) and a book on ‘Substance use in young people’ (2020).
Mental and physical comorbidity, smoking cessation, decision making in substance misusers, suicide and substance misuse, pregnant drug users, addiction along the life course, and the enhancement of training about substance misuse for health professionals, are some of her continuing research interests.
She organises a training programme comprised of internationally acclaimed colleagues for medical and allied health professionals at the Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust.
On an international level, she was past president of the Alcohol and Drugs Section of the European Psychiatric Association, international editor of American Journal of Addictions, and on the International Advisory Boards of the British Journal of Psychiatry and Addiction. She is on the International Editorial Board of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Her national appointments include Chair of the Faculty of Substance Misuse (1998-2002) and founding member of the Academic Faculty (2005-2012) at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She was a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) (2002-2010), and Chair of the Treatment Working Group. She also sat on the Executive of the Society for the Study of Addiction (1994-2011).