New Surgeon General, Surgeon Vice Admiral Philip Raffaelli, welcomed at IoP
08 January 2010
Academics from the Academic Centre for Defence Mental Health (ACDMH) and King's Centre for Military Health Research (KCMHR) welcomed the new Surgeon General, Surgeon Vice Admiral Philip Raffaelli, on Wednesday, 6 January during his first month in office. The Surgeon General is the most senior medical professional in the UK Armed Forces, responsible for medical care both at home and on operations. Surgeon Vice Admiral Raffaelli, who took up the post at the end of December, visited King's College London very early on in his tenure which is indicative of his high level of interest in the mental health of Service personnel. He spent the morning hearing briefings prepared by Professors Simon Wessely and Neil Greenberg, Dr Nicola Fear and Norman Jones. The purpose of the briefings was to allow the Surgeon General to hear about King's world leading work and the latest findings on the health of servicemen and women of the British Armed Forces who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The discussions centred around the KCMHR large scale cohort study which has examined at a sample of about 10,000 military personnel. The findings from this study provide the Ministry of Defence (MOD) with the best global assessment of the health of their personnel. The current study finished collecting data at the end of September 2009 and is a follow on from previous studies (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr) carried out at King's; the results of which will be published in due course.
The discussions also covered the ACDMH's work looking at the mental health of deployed personnel and provided the Surgeon General with an update on the Battlemind study (http://www.battlemind.co.uk/). This randomised controlled trial is examining novel ways of providing homecoming troops with mental health training in order to help them re-adapt to being at home. The follow up phase of Battlemind study is nearly complete and the ACDMH team hopes to be in a position to report the results to MOD, who funded the study, by the end of the year. The researchers also told the Surgeon General about the novel research they are currently embarking on including a new study of children of military fathers and other important studies that are just getting underway in the departments. The morning ended with Surgeon Vice Admiral Raffaelli discussing the study's results and the plans for the future.
Both ACDMH and KCMHR have carried out numerous military health studies which feed into the Master's in War and Psychiatry course which is led by Professor Edgar Jones. This course is unique in that it is the only internationally recognised qualification in military psychiatry which will give students transferable skills and a higher level of theoretical understanding.