Wendy Burn

Wendy Katherine Burn (born 1958) is a Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry. She was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists from 2017 to 2020.

Early life and education Burn was born in Oxford. She decided that she wanted to be a doctor at the age of two. Her parents were both doctors and her mother had been the first in her family to attend university. Whilst at school she joined the St John Ambulance brigade and spent her weekends administering first aid. She managed to turn her academic studies around, and passed the later years of her degree whilst acting as stage manager for the medical school revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Burn has been consistently involved with postgraduate medical training, and established the Yorkshire School of Psychiatry. She was the first Head of the School of Psychiatry in 2007. In 2009 she joined forces with the University of Sheffield and formed the Yorkshire and the Humber School of Psychiatry. She has stopped the MRCPsych examination from making a financial bonus and reduce the number of papers. The project looks to increase the neuroscience components of psychiatric training to make it meet modern mental health treatment requirements. The focus of her presidency was helping old people with depression, dementia and anxiety. She also campaigned for more funding for the National Health Service and opportunities to increase mental health bed capacity. She serves as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group.

In 2018 she was awarded an honorary award from the University of Leeds.

Burn was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to mental health.

Personal life Burn married her husband William in 1991. In 1993 she was the first consultant in the Psychiatry Unit located at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to take maternity leave for her son's birth. She had her second child, a daughter, in 1994.