Research by Wolfson staff has vital real-world applications, impacting on lives across the globe. Read about some of the recent work by our academics
The Wolfson Institute of Population Health (WIPH) is internationally recognised as a centre for research that identifies the causes and methods of prevention of health conditions leading to poor quality of life and premature death.
Our work has had an unprecedented impact on lives across the world. By sharing knowledge and pushing the boundaries of research, we will continue to advance preventive medicine on a global scale.
Recent work by our academics has been influential in furthering the understanding of mental health, while staff have also been actively responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Mark Freestone, Reader in Mental Health released his new book, Making a Psychopath in October 2020. Widely recognised as the psychologist who helped bring Killing Eve assassin Villanelle to life, Mark now shares his insights into seven of the most dangerous minds he has encountered over the last 15 years.
Dr Freestone was the Psychiatry Consultant for the hit BBC show ‘Killing Eve’. He said one of the challenges he faced was being caught between wanting to shape and encourage the writers’ most exciting ideas but also sticking to the brief of ensuring the character’s arc and decisions were based on research evidence and clinical reality.
Mark’s work is shaped by previous roles he has held working in two of Britain’s three high-secure hospitals and a maximum security prison. The character of Villanelle is described as a psychopath. Generally there is a checklist of traits that a psychologist or psychiatrist will apply against a criminal to reach a judgement about whether they would meet enough criteria to be a ‘clinical psychopath’.
Dr Freestone relished the challenge of writing a genuinely psychopathic character, with all the difficulties that posed. He said: “If you’ve watched the season all the way through to the end and think you understand the nature of the dynamic between Eve and Villanelle completely, then you are a better psychologist than me.”
The Ministry of Justice has published a major report, authored by WIPH researchers including Landon Kuester, Mark Freestone, Katharina Seewald, Ruby Rathbone and Kam Bhui, on the use of Psychologically Informed Planned Environments (PIPEs). The report shows that, within prisons, the intervention can lead to improved social and relational functioning, associated with improving social climate and positive staff disposition.
PIPEs interventions are designed to support residents with offender personality disorder in their journey through the Criminal Justice System and into the community. Staff working in PIPEs are trained and supported to work with offenders in a psychologically informed way, with close attention to how those who live and work there relate to one another.
Quantitative data from residents in prison PIPEs reported better social and relational skills than those in comparator wings, with statistically significantly lower levels of problematic social problem solving and relating styles, particularly those related to ‘personality disorder’.
Staff and residents also reported improved working relationships and a better sense of safety. Residents engaged in pro-social behaviour, corroborated by staff, who felt they had reduced their use of force. Staff reported a sense of mattering in their role, noting that what they did was meaningful and that they felt particularly supported through supervision.
People with severe mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and psychosis, are more likely to use general non-psychiatric health services than people without severe mental illness. Adults with severe mental illness have more non-psychiatric inpatient hospital admissions, longer stays in hospital, higher 30-day readmission rates, more emergency department visits, and greater use of primary care services than people without severe mental illness.
Lead author Dr Amy Ronaldson said: “These study results will help to build a case for and guide the delivery of system-wide integration of mental and physical health services.”
Excess psychosis diagnoses amongst Black and South Asian men in deprived urban areas could reflect a cluster of disadvantage in specific places, rather than individual experiences of deprivation alone.
This could be explained, Wolfson researchers suggest, by four markers of vulnerability that could reinforce each other and aggravate the risk of developing severe mental illness. The components of the syndemic were drug and alcohol dependence, criminality and violence, risky or coercive sexual behaviour and psychosis/anxiety.
Co-author Professor Kam Bhui, Head of The Wolfson Institute’s Centre for Psychiatry, said: “To put it bluntly, ‘place’ should be seen as a risk factor in psychosis. Historical, political and social factors around place contribute to these health conditions. Place-based measures and interventions in early life are more likely to succeed than costly support or even punitive measures in later life.”
He continued: “We believe that applying a syndemic approach in psychiatry is a significant advance. Our findings should be widely used in psychiatry and help shape preventive public health practice.
Professor Victoria Bird has been awarded a £7m grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to develop a new Global Health Research Centre with partners across Latin America.
The new Centre will work with communities across Latin America to develop innovative, low-cost solutions to improve healthcare for non-communicable diseases – with a key focus on indigenous populations. Taking the role as Centre co-director alongside Professor Bird is Professor Carlos Gomez-Restrepo, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Javeriana University (Colombia).
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are diseases that are not transferred from person to person, such as mental health conditions, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, or diabetes. Worldwide, they are responsible for 8 out of 10 premature deaths, with the greatest burden in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The NIHR Global Health Research Centre for the Community Management of Long-term Conditions will bring together researchers from Queen Mary University of London and from three locations across Latin America – Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, Universidad Franz Tamayo in Bolivia, and Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala.
Professor Faith Osier, President of the International Union of Immunological Societies and Chair of the NIHR Global Health Research Centres Funding Committee, said: “These new Centres are truly ground-breaking - it’s the first time we’ve seen anything like this level of investment in non-communicable disease research in low and middle income countries. The potential for this truly equitable partnership working between researchers in LMICs and in the UK is immense and we’re so excited to see the advances that the next five years will bring.”
Our staff have also been responding to the COVID-19 emergency.
Overweight or obese individuals have made up 78% of infections and 62% of hospital deaths from COVID-19 in the UK. Even after adjusting for potential confounders, the risk of critical illness increased by 44% for those who were overweight, and almost doubled for those with obesity. Researchers say that coronavirus has made tackling the obesity crisis even more urgent and are calling on food industries to stop promoting unhealthy food and drink, and on governments to take action, to reduce further deaths from COVID-19.
The Wolfson Institute’s COVID-19 testing laboratory went live in December 2020, and is now staffed and operating, with plans to process over 1 million tests per year at the Charterhouse Square site. The laboratory was funded by a £3.6 million grant, and Queen Mary is working with UCL, King’s, and Imperial, as part of the Med-City Testing Alliance.