Projects we have funded

Award to assist with the completion of research contributing to Veterans Work: Moving On. Veterans Work, made-up of leading professional services firm Deloitte, the Armed Forces charity the Officers’ Association and The Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT), is a consortium of organisations whose collective aim is to improve our understanding of veteran employment.

An 18-month feasibility study to explore the type of mental health problems UK veterans who actively seek medical help present with and how this compares to the general population who access the same service. The study is unique in that it includes veterans who access secondary care and so have more complex mental health needs than those remaining in primary care. Read the press release and report. A 7-month follow on study was approved in 2018.

A follow on project to build on the findings of the first SLaM 1 (manual search) project aiming to strengthen the data collection methods, interpretation and findings of the SLAM 1 report, and to design and test the accuracy of a novel machine learning-based NLP veteran detection tool to aid identifying veterans in electronic health records within South London and Maudsley's biomedical research case register to enable speed, ease and accuracy of future veterans research.

Grant awarded to produce a model of care for veterans in the Criminal Justice System that the sector is prepared to endorse, to inform NHS England’s commissioning arrangements.

3 year sponsorship of an award to recognise and celebrate people and organisations that work collaboratively and effectively with other military organisations or charities. The FiMT ‘Working Together’ award not only presents an opportunity to reward successful teamwork but also demonstrate best practise in the sector, highlighting goals for others to aspire to.

A 12-month innovative research project, to be carried out by Professor Thanos Karatzias, that will test the prevalence of a new type of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) known as Complex PTSD, in ex-Service personnel in order to provide more appropriate treatment.

An 18-month project to explore the impact and experiences of a CDT discharge on subsequent substance misuse, mental health and overall readjustment to civilian life, and compare how they fare with other ESLs.

A 15-month study to be carried out by Dr Victoria Williamson entitled ‘Experiences and impact of moral injury in UK veterans’ to conduct the first scoping study to explore the experiences of moral injury in UK ex-Service personnel.

A 3-year follow-on piece of work to the original Scottish Veterans’ Health Study (2012-2015), to be carried out by Dr Beverly Bergman. The original study provided the first insight into the long-term health of 57,000 veterans and compared their health profile to non-veterans. In this follow-on work, a further 10 years of birth cohort data will be incorporated to examine important mental health outcomes in younger veterans, and will include additional health outcomes such as post-Service amputations and joint replacement surgery.

A year long project, to be carried out by Dr Ian Whyte, that will identify the prevalence, motivations and mental health status of users of Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs and Supplements (PIEDS) amongst ex-Service personnel. Read the press release.