Ms Charlotte Williamson

Charlotte is currently a PhD student at the King's Centre for Military Health Research (KCMHR), King's College London. Charlotte completed a Bachelor of Science (with honours) degree in Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Master of Science degree in Mental Health, Ethics, and Law at King’s College London.

 

She went on to work as a Research Assistant in the field of military mental health, first at Combat Stress and later joining KCMHR. Charlotte has project managed and supported several studies including a randomised controlled trial to assess the efficacy of a novel alcohol intervention app for veterans (DrinksRation), validating the Military Service Identification Tool for use on electronic health records, investigating the health and wellbeing of female veterans, exploring the impact of Covid-19 on veterans, and investigating UK veteran families.

 

Funded via Phase 4 of the KCMHR Health and Wellbeing Study (funded by the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, UK Government), Charlotte’s PhD work sets out to explore self-harm and suicide behaviours in the UK Armed Forces. This work uses a mixed-methods design including in-depth qualitative interviews on ex-serving personnel’s experiences of seeking help for self-harm and suicide behaviours (primary data) and quantitative statistical analyses investigating the prevalence of, and factors associated with, self-harm and suicide behaviours among serving and ex-serving personnel (secondary data from KCMHR Health and Wellbeing Study).

 

Research Interests:

• Military mental health
• Self-harm and suicidality
• Digital interventions

 

Key Publications:

• Williamson C, Croak B, Simms A, Fear NT, Sharp M-L & Stevelink SAM (Accepted/In press). Risk and Protective Factors for Self-Harm and Suicide Behaviours among Serving and Ex-Serving Personnel of the UK Armed Forces, Canadian Armed Forces, Australian Defence Force and New Zealand Defence Force: A Systematic Review. PLoS One.
• Williamson C, Palmer L, Leightley D, Pernet D, Chandran D, Leal R, Murphy D, Fear NT & Stevelink SAM (2023). Military Veterans and Civilians’ Mental Health Diagnoses: An Analysis of Secondary Mental Health Services. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. 58, 1029-1037. doi: 10.1007/s00127-022-02411-x
• Williamson C, Baumann J & Murphy D (2023). Exploring the Health and Wellbeing of a National Sample of UK Treatment-Seeking Veterans. Psychological Trauma: Theory , Research, Practice and Policy. 15(4), 672-680. doi: 10.1037/tra0001356
• Leightley D*, Williamson C*, Rona RJ, Carr E, Shearer J, Davis JP, Simms A, Fear NT, Goodwin L & Murphy D (2022). Evaluating the Efficacy of the Drinks:Ration Mobile App to Reduce Alcohol Consumption in a Help-Seeking Military Veteran Population: Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 10(6):e38991. doi: 10.2196/38991
• Williamson C, White K, Rona RJ, Simms A, Fear NT, Goodwin L, Murphy D & Leightley D (2022). Smartphone-based alcohol interventions: A systematic review on the role of notifications in changing behaviors towards alcohol. Substance Abuse, 43(1), 1232-1244. doi: 10.1080/08897077.2022.2074595