Green light for study on children with fathers in the UK Armed Forces
25 February 2010
The Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London is delighted to announce that the US Department of Defense has given nearly £1million (1.7 million USD) funding to study the health and wellbeing of children whose fathers either are or have been in the UK Armed Forces.
Dr Amy Iversen, who will be leading the research with Dr Nicola Fear, both from the King’s Centre for Military Health Research said: 'The US Department of Defense felt this was an area in which they would like to conduct further research and were encouraged by the fact that the Institute of Psychiatry has a cohort study of military fathers who had given permission to be involved in further research.'
The research aims to better understand the effects of paternal deployment and possible subsequent paternal mental health problems, on children of UK Armed Forces personnel. They will examine a wide range of health and wellbeing issues in military children, including mental health and school performance.
Dr Iversen continues: 'This is an exciting piece of research as we know little about the impact of fathers’ wellbeing on children’s development and it is particularly interesting in the military context with the added challenges of separation due to deployment.'
Drs Iversen and Fear expect the research to commence this Spring and run for over three years. The project will employ a team of four full-time staff in addition to the principal investigators.