Project Title: The association between bullying victimisation and self-harm among adolescents, and the relationship with gender and coping. A longitudinal study, using data from the Resilience, Ethnicity, and AdolesCent Mental Health (REACH) Study

Emma is a LISS DTP PhD student at the Centre for Society & Mental Health (CSMH), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Emma is a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Department of Psychology and a member of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion working group for the CSMH.

Emma’s journey at King’s College London started in 2010 as a Law student, where she was also Communications and Research Officer for the KCL Pro Bono society and a Student Ambassador, primarily supporting the Widening Participation department on the K+ project. Later on, she was involved in two mental health service user advisory groups facilitated at KCL, and was also a volunteer Research Assistant, assisting on a project that looks at interpretation biases and interpersonal difficulties in adolescents with eating disorders. Most recently, Emma was a Research Assistant based in the Psychology department, within the NIHR Maudsley’s BRC theme ‘Patient and Carer Involvement and Engagement’, where she facilitated the FAST-R service and was involved in several mixed methods research studies with PPI at the core.

Emma has a background in mental health policy and research, holding a multidisciplinary perspective of complex issues. She has worked in the third/community sector (Healthwatch West Sussex, Mental Health Foundation) and higher education, including LSE, where she held two roles: as a freelance Research Assistant within the Care Policy and Evaluation Unit and as a Research and Evaluation graduate intern for the Learning Technology and Innovation department. In this role, she used ethnographic and mixed methods (including interviews and focus groups) for projects aiming to better understand students’ experiences and needs and how this fitted into the built learning environment and could inform future policy

Research Interests: 

Emma's academic research interests include mental health promotion and prevention in young people, self-harm, carer wellbeing, eating disorders and service user involvement. Psychological interests include social and cognitive psychology, including repetitive negative thinking and attentional/interpretation biases. 

Expertise and public engagement

Emma has experience of working in widening participation as a PhD tutor for the Brilliant Club, a UK charity that aims to widen access to university for students from underrepresented groups. I designed and deliver an 8-week course to small groups of students in secondary schools

Emma is also plenary speaker for Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, delivering 1 – 1.5 hour workshops to people training to become mental health first aid instructors, on topics linked to my own lived experience of mental health challenges

Emma is an active member of the mental health community, with engagement experience such as:

• Training: qualified instructor for the MHFA 2-day youth and adult courses, 1-day youth course, half day mental health aware course.
• Panel discussions/lectures about PPI: KCL MSc module ‘Big Data in Urban Mental Health’; BRC Annual Conference 2019; MQ Annual Science Meeting 2016; meeting of the Institute of Mental Health 2017; Clinical Research Network: Mental Health 2015
• Public speaking: Media work (BBC News live, Radio 4), policy (e.g., giving evidence at an All-Party Parliamentary Group in the House of Lords; Youth Select Committee at the House of Commons).
• Volunteering: Formerly involved in evaluating services (Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) and campaigning (Time to Change)
• Writing/blogging: LSE, Mental Health Foundation, MHFA England, The Mighty, University of Birmingham
• Member of PPI advisory groups:different mental health research projects since 2014, including: 1) Young People’s Mental Health Advisory Group now managed by NIHR Maudsley’s Biomedical Research Centre (BRC; 2014 – 2018), and 2) the REACH study’s advisory group during its development phase (2016-18)

Non-journal publications: 

Evans-Lacko, S., Wilson, E., et al.* (2019). World Alzheimer Report 2019: Attitudes to dementia. London: Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI).  *Note: authorship is officially ADI but I was part of the LSE team commissioned to put report together. I am listed in one of the first pages as co-author.

Knapp, M., McDaid, D.,Wilson, E., (2018). Money matters: Funding care. In A. Martin, M. Bloch, & M. Volkmar (Eds.), Lewis’s child and adolescent psychiatry: A comprehensive textbook (5 ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer.

Wilson, E., Roger, K., & Ney, S., (2017) The Clement House rotunda project: an evaluation of six informal learning spaces at LSE. London: London School of Economics and Political Science.

McDaid, D., Wilson, E., Knapp, M., (2017). Barriers and facilitators to commissioning cost-effective services for promotion of mental health and wellbeing and prevention of mental ill-health. London: Public Health England