Peter Tyrer is Emeritus Professor of Community Psychiatry in the Division of Psychiatry in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College, London, having previously been head of department and a professor at Imperial College since 1991. He was editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry from 2003 to 2013. He has chaired NICE guideline groups for borderline personality disorder, substance misuse and psychosis, and management of imminent aggression for the Department of Health in England, has written over 600 original articles and 43 books, mainly about anxiety, depression, personality disorder and their treatment, but also including novels and operettas. He developed nidotherapy, the collaborative and systematic assessment and manipulation of the environment to help chronic mental illness, in 1990 as a response to continuing failure of standard treatments for many mental disorders.  This was linked to the Global initiative on Psychiatry and now is a separate charity, NIDUS-UK, which promotes mental health reform and environmental changes worldwide.