Senior Lecturer

Deputy Director of Clinical Psychology Programme

Continuing Education and Training Coordinator

CARE Team Member

D.Clin.Psy (UCL), D.Phil (Oxford), B.Soc.Sci. (Hons.) (NUS)

Matthew completed his first degree in psychology at NUS. He later read a doctorate at the Department of Psychiatry, Oxford University, with a research focus on gambling-related cognitive vulnerabilities. His subsequent professional doctoral clinical training was completed at University College London (UCL) where he administered formal psychological assessments and psychotherapy interventions, and was also involved in service development. As part of his clinical training, Matthew wrote a doctoral thesis on recovery-based outcome measurement among Vietnamese refugees living in the UK. Upon graduation, Matthew returned to his alma mater, NUS, and received an early career award with his previous senior tutorship appointment at the Department of Psychology.

Matthew teaches and supervises on the Masters in clinical psychology programme. His clinical work has been in specialist primary and secondary mental health services across various National Health Trusts in London. This has given him the experience of working with high-risk adults with severe emotion regulation difficulties, and children and adolescents with mood and anxiety concerns. Matthew completed his specialist training in the social service sector, offering individual consultancy and group training to social workers and foster carers in an inner-city fostering service. His clinical and consultancy work has been informed by behavioural, cognitive, systemic and psychoanalytic ideas, in addition to contemporary “third-wave” meditative practices.

Matthew’s research programme aims to develop effective interventions that target specific and generic vulnerabilities for psychopathology. This is achieved by exploring the links between cognitive errors and emotion regulation flexibility, and studying their combined impact on the severity of depression and anxiety in Singaporean adolescents and young adults. Reflecting his clinical interests in how these cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities emerge, Matthew also investigates how parental and parenting factors contribute to their development. Finally, Matthew has received SRSS funding to conduct a health and social sector consultation project, and will be conducting in-depth interviews with prominent industry stakeholders to improve competency-based teaching within NUS’s Masters in Clinical Psychology programme.