Clare is a Researcher with Lived Experience of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, retraining in Psychology late in life and undertaking a doctorate part-time at King’s in 2010 because of her concern at the lack of preconception advice – and research on the issue – for women with bipolar disorder. Clare's PhD on ‘Women with Bipolar Disorder and Pregnancy’ was supervised by Prof. Louise Howard and Prof. Ian Jones of Cardiff University. Clare is currently PPI Lead for the Effectiveness and Cost-effectiveness of Community Perinatal Mental Health Services (ESMI-II) project.

Research interests

• Women’s mental health
• Bipolar disorder
• Postpartum psychosis

Expertise and Public Engagement

Clare lectures on the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Perinatal Training courses and gives numerous talks and webinars etc. on women’s mental health issues, primarily Women with Bipolar and those affecting perinatal health. As a former Chair and Ambassador of Bipolar UK, Bipolar UK www.bipolaruk.org, Clare is very involved in public engagement with the bipolar community; she is currently Co-chair of the Bipolar Commission due to report in Spring 2022. Clare is also a trustee of both the Maternal Mental Health Alliance maternalmentalhealthalliance.org and APP - Action on Postpartum Psychosis www.app-network.org

Key Publications

• Dolman C, PhD: ‘Women with Bipolar Disorder and Pregnancy: Factors influencing their Decision-Making regarding treatment’, 2019
• Dolman, C., Jones, I. R., & Howard, L. M. (2016). Women with bipolar disorder and pregnancy: factors influencing their decision-making. BJPsych open, 2(5), 294-300.
• Khalifeh, Hind, Clare Dolman, and Louise M. Howard. Safety of psychotropic drugs in pregnancy. BMJ 350 (2015): h2260.
• Dolman C, Jones I, Howard LM: Pre-conception to parenting: a systematic review and meta-synthesis of the qualitative literature on motherhood for women with severe mental illness. Arch Womens Ment Health 2013, 16(3):173-196.
• Heron J, Gilbert N, Dolman C, Shah S, Beare I, Dearden S, Muckelroy N, Jones I, Ives J: Information and support needs during recovery from postpartum psychosis. Arch Women’s Mental Health (2012):1–11.