Claire Wilson MRCPsych PhD is a psychiatrist and academic at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. She is also a Senior Harkness Fellow (2023-24; funded by the Commonwealth Fund).

Claire employs a lifespan approach to the development of healthy and resilient families. In her clinical practice she supports perinatal people and those planning for pregnancy in the community of South East London. Her clinical work and research focus on the intergenerational transmission of risk for mental health and disease and opportunities for intervention to prevent adverse developmental trajectories.

Claire’s areas of focus include the preconception and perinatal periods and although she is an epidemiologist by training, she uses a range of methodologies to translate her work from the level of the bench or the database, to the bedside, to policy makers and to the public. This includes policy orientated and clinically relevant evidence synthesis and co-design and evaluation of complex interventions.

She is particularly interested in how parental multimorbid physical and mental ill health and substance misuse come together in the preconception and perinatal periods to shape offspring outcomes across generations. During her Harkness Fellowship, she investigated the influence of racial inequalities on parental mental health outcomes.

Research Interests 

• Psychiatric epidemiology
• Maternal and preconception mental health  
• Infant mental health 
• Nutrition 
• Physical-mental health interface in pregnancy 
• Substance misuse in pregnancy 
• Medical education 

Teaching

• iBSc Women’s Health 
• BSc Psychology 
• MBBS Year 2 
• MSc Developmental Psychology and Psychopathology
• Women’s Mental Health summer school  

Expertise and Public Engagement

• Cochrane Library podcast: Antidepressant treatment for postnatal depression https://www.cochrane.org/podcasts/10.1002/14651858.CD013560.pub2. Jun 2021.
• UK representative on Management Committee of European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Network on Perinatal Depression. Apr 2019-present. 
• Advisory Board, International Federation of Wellbeing in Pregnancy. Jan 2018- present.  
• Academic Secretary, Women and Mental Health Special Interest Group, Royal College of Psychiatrists. May 2016-present. 
• Mending the Gap podcast: https://soundcloud.com/user-677776636/exploring-physical-mental-health-interface-pregnancy-with-dr-claire-wilson. Apr 2020.
• Commission with King’s Culture for short film about experiences of women with gestational diabetes: https://www.gestationaldiabetes.co.uk/gd-one-prick-at-a-time/. Sep 2020-Apr 2021.