Dr Jianan Bao

Dr Jianan Bao is a Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist and expert witness at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, where she has been in post since 2026. Her principal areas of clinical expertise include adult mental health, serious mental illness, mood and anxiety disorders, PTSD and trauma, neuropsychiatry, capacity and cognitive assessment, self-harm and suicide risk, and the psychiatric effects of cancer treatment.

Dr Bao has over twelve years’ clinical experience across general hospital, inpatient, community and national specialist psychiatric services. Her current liaison psychiatry practice involves the assessment and management of adults with complex psychiatric presentations, including psychosis, bipolar disorder, adjustment disorders, delirium, autism and functional neurological disorders. Her specialist interests also encompass menopause and mental health, medication review and the psychiatric complications and side effects associated with cancer treatment.

She holds Section 12(2) approval and Approved Clinician status and has extensive experience in diagnostic, mental health, capacity and risk assessment. Alongside her clinical practice, Dr Bao contributes to psychiatric education as a lecturer on the King’s College London MBBS Programme.

Dr Jianan Bao commenced medico-legal practice in 2026 and provides expert psychiatric opinion in Clinical Negligence, Personal Injury, Family and Criminal matters. Her experience includes claimant instructions and the preparation of screening and advisory opinions, breach of duty assessments, causation reports, and condition and prognosis reports.

Her medico-legal expertise encompasses adult mental health and complex psychiatric presentations, including serious mental illness, mood and anxiety disorders, psychosis, PTSD and trauma, neuropsychiatry, autism, capacity and cognitive assessment, self-harm and suicide risk. She also has specialist experience in the psychiatric complications and side effects of cancer treatment. Dr Bao’s experience includes mental health and capacity assessments, diagnostic and risk assessment, and matters involving Mental Health Act tribunals, enabling her to provide focused psychiatric opinion across civil, family and criminal proceedings.

Dr Bao’s clinical practice focuses on the assessment and management of adults with complex psychiatric presentations, including serious mental illness, psychosis, bipolar disorder, mood and anxiety disorders, adjustment disorders, PTSD and trauma. Her work involves diagnostic assessment, evaluation of mental state and risk, medication review, and the assessment of self-harm and suicide risk.

She has particular expertise in capacity and cognitive assessment, including the evaluation of adults where mental illness, cognitive difficulties or other complex clinical factors may affect decision-making. Her practice also encompasses neuropsychiatry, autism in adults, delirium and functional neurological disorders.

A specialist aspect of Dr Bao’s practice is liaison psychiatry within a cancer setting. This includes assessing and managing the psychological and psychiatric complications associated with cancer and its treatment, including psychiatric side effects arising from cancer therapies. Her broader interests also include the relationship between menopause and mental health.

Dr Bao previously held an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship and has co-authored peer-reviewed research spanning psychosis, functional neurological disorders, psychiatric phenomenology and old age psychiatry. She is a lecturer on the King’s College London MBBS Programme, where she teaches culture and mental health, and also contributes to specialist psychiatric education.