Orestis Zavlis

OrestisZavlis

I am interested in various areas of clinical psychology but I am particularly passionate about building better theories of psychopathology — see Research for details.

After finishing my BSc in Psychology and Statistics at the University of Sheffield and my MSc in Psychological Research at the University of Oxford, I came to University College London to work with Peter Fonagy, Michael Moutoussis, and their teams (see lab website) on critically examining the concept of “personality disorder”.

In this site you can find details of my ongoing PhD research, as well as hints on future work from myself and close others.

Get in touch · Read my CV ↗

Research

Formal Modeling of Psychopathology

This research line focuses on building formal models that outline precisely how psychopathology problems emerge, persist, and, ultimately, ameliorate (see lab).

  1. A formal theory of mood instability
    Zavlis, Bentall, Fonagy & Rigoli. Clinical Psychological Science, 2025.
  2. A generative model of personality disorder as a relational disorder
    Zavlis, Moutoussis, Fonagy & Story. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, 2025.
  3. A systematic review of computational modeling of interpersonal dynamics in psychopathology
    Zavlis, Story, Friedrich, Fonagy & Moutoussis. Nature Mental Health, 2025.
  4. Computational approaches to mental illnesses
    Zavlis. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2024.

Disorders of Personality or Relating?

This research line focuses on critically examining whether disorders of “personality” are truly about “all personality” (as their name implies) or about primarily some aspects of personality (as other names imply).

  1. Personality Disordered
    Zavlis. Substack on how to best define “disorders of personality”.
  2. Personality disorders as relational disorders
    Zavlis. Psychiatry at the Margins, 2025.
  3. A generative model of personality disorder as a relational disorder
    Zavlis, Moutoussis, Fonagy & Story. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, 2025.
  4. From personality pathology to relational pathology
    Zavlis & Moutoussis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 2026.

Psychotherapy

This research line focuses on clarifying the main goals of psychotherapy and how they could be best achieved.

  1. Complex relational needs impede progress in NHS Talking Therapies (IAPT)
    Zavlis. Frontiers in Public Health, 2023.
  2. Pressing need for clinical trial research on dimensional personality disorder
    Zavlis, Luyten, Pilling & Fonagy. The Lancet Psychiatry, 2025.
  3. The most important aims of psychotherapy: to love, to work, and to find meaning
    Zavlis, Fonagy & Luyten. The Lancet Psychiatry, 2025.

Commentaries and Critiques

This research line focuses on providing commentaries for interesting papers (i.e., papers that I believe advance psychological science) and critiques for uninteresting papers (i.e., papers that I believe stall or distort psychological science).

  1. Personality functioning is not a unitary entity
    Zavlis. Personality and Mental Health, 2025.
  2. On the epistemic injustices of personality disorders
    Zavlis. OSF, 2025.
  3. The dangers of reifying ‘borderline personality disorder’
    Zavlis. OSF, 2025.
  4. Either all mental disorders are personality disorders or there are no personality disorders
    Zavlis & Fonagy. Commentary, 2024.

Initiatives

A public advocacy project I founded to redefine borderline personality disorder as relational sensitivity disorder (primarily in the context of ICD-11).

Contact

Research inquiries

I am not sure if I want to “stay in academia”. But if you're interested in collaborating or have questions about my research, write to me at

Clinical inquiries

I am not a clinician (yet) but I can give pointers to excellent mental health services in the UK. If you need help finding good mental healthcare, write to me at

Consultancy inquiries

I am not a consultant, but I have previously helped consulting firms (like PwC) solve specific problems. If you feel I could help you solve something, write to me at