Mary Cannon is an Irish psychiatrist and research scientist
Education
As an undergraduate, Cannon studied medicine at University College Dublin and trained as a psychiatrist with Eadbhard O"Callaghan at the Street John of God Hospital in Dublin. She then won an "advanced training fellowship" from the Wellcome Trust to study with Robin Murray at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Career
She is best known for her study of the risk factors for mental illness in young people. Cannon is an associate professor of Psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, as well as a consulting psychiatrist at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. Cannon researches risk factors for psychosis and other mental illnesses in young people.
She and her research group have made important discoveries about the correlations of traumatic events in early childhood, including prenatal infection and childhood bullying, to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia in adults.
Cannon also studies the mental health of Irish youth. Her group"s discovery that more than one-fifth of Irish 11- to 13-year-olds have experienced "auditory hallucinations" (hearing voices) attracted significant media attention.
She has expressed the desire that her findings will lessen the stigma around auditory hallucinations, and will help to "remove the boundary" between youth and adult psychiatric services and research. In 2014, Cannon was the only woman among eleven Irish researchers named to the Thomson Reuters "World"s Most Influential Scientific Minds" report.
This report honors the 3,000 most highly cited scientists in the world.