Digby Tantum

Digby Tantam is a psychotherapist, counsellor, psychologist, and psychiatrist. Together with his wife Professor Emmy van Deurzen, Digby is a co-founder of the New School for Psychotherapy and Counselling. He is an eminent researcher and influential author in the field of autism.

Digby has worked in the NHS for over forty years, and as a University Professor for over 20. He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield, and a Honorary Senior Visiting Professor at Middlesex University

He has written over 70 peer reviewed papers and 32 book chapters, and his books are Psychotherapy and Counselling in Practice published by Cambridge University Press in 2002, Understanding repeated self-injury (with Nick Huband) published by Palgrave. 2009, Can the world afford autistic spectrum disorder? published by Jessica Kingsley, also in 2009, and also published by Jessica Kingsley but in 2012, Autism spectrum disorders: a life span perspective.

Digby is currently Clinical Professor of Psychotherapy at the University of Sheffield, where he is Director of the Centre for the Study of Conflict and Reconciliation, and an Honorary Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

He is a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society, the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, and the Higher Education Academy.

Digby has been providing a clinical service for people with autistic spectrum disorders since 1980, when he was awarded a training fellowship from the Medical Research Council to study Asperger syndrome. Digby created the Sheffield Asperger Assessment Service in 1995 when he moved to Sheffield from the University of Warwick, where he had been appointed to the first chair in psychotherapy in the UK.