2025 - The Anxiety Loop - Dr. Jessica Eccles

Dr. Jessica Eccles joined us at the 2025 EDS ECHO Summit: Mental Health event to discuss The Anxiety Loop. This talk explores the research findings demonstrating the connection between hypermobility and anxiety and how this may open up pathways for novel treatments. Dr Eccles is an award-winning researcher and a neurodevelopmental psychiatrist specialising in the links between brain and body, especially as they relate to flexible joints (hypermobility). She trained in medicine at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. As well as her University position at Brighton and Sussex Medical School as Associate Professor (Reader) in Brain-Body Medicine in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, she works in the Sussex NHS Neurodevelopmental Service (ADHD, Autism and Tourette syndrome) where she and colleagues have set up the world’s first Neurodivergent Brain Body Clinic. She has been working on the intersect between hypermobility and neurodivergence since she first came to work at Brighton and Sussex medical school in Neuroscience in 2009. She chairs the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry Special Interest Group – bringing together neurodevelopmental clinicians across the country. She hopes to challenge stereotypes and encourage curiosity. Alongside all things brain and body she is interested in photography.