Professor Charlotte Hanlon

Biography

Background

My main focus is on interventions, services and systems to support recovery of people with severe mental health conditions in low- and middle-income countries. Current projects include the NIHR global health group on homelessness and mental health in Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya (HOPE), the SCOPE project (Studying the Contexts of Psychosis in Ethiopia), aiming to achieve earlier and better care for people with psychosis, and the PROMISE project (Psychosis Recovery Orientation in Malawi by Improving Services and Engagement).

I trained in medicine, with an intercalated BSc in Natural Sciences (Genetics and Pathology). In between pre-clinical and clinical training, I spent a year as a 'student at large' in the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago (1994/1995). I then trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley, London (2000-2006). I held a Wellcome Research Training Fellowship in Tropical Clinical Epidemiology from 2003-2006, which supported me to complete an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2003/2004) and a PhD in epidemiological psychiatry (2004-2009). I was a faculty member (Associate Professor) at the Department of Psychiatry, Addis Ababa University and then clinical senior lecturer at King's College London (2011-2018), reader (2018-2022) and then promoted to professor in 2022. I joined the University of Edinburgh in June 2024.

I work as an honorary consultant psychiatrist in The Access Practice (NHS Lothian), a primary health care centre which works with people experiencing homelessness in Edinburgh.

I was co-director of the WHO collaborating centre for mental health research and training at King's College London from 2020-2024 and have ongoing collaborations with WHO.

Qualifications

BM BS, MRCPsych, MA, MSc, PhD

Responsibilities & affiliations

Co-convener, Global Mental Health Collaborative 

Adjunct Professor, Addis Ababa University (Department of Psychiatry) 

Wellcome Population and Public Health Early Career Advisory Group 

Associate Editor, PLOS Medicine 

Editorial Board, Schizophrenia Research

Co-Director, Centre for Global Mental Health, King's College London (2022-2024)

Co-Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Research and Training, King's College London (2020-2024)

Research summary

My research interests include complex intervention design and evaluation, including clinical trials, implementation research, health services research and systems strengthening. I have experience in mental health measures and their cultural validation, mental health epidemiology and mixed methods research. My main focus is on work with people with severe mental health conditions. However, I also have a stream of work on women's mental health. 

Project activity

My work focuses on interventions, services and systems to support recovery for people experiencing severe mental health conditions. 

In HOPE, I co-lead (with Professor Atalay Alem) a consortium of people with lived experience, practitioners, policy-makers and mental health researchers from Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya. The focus is on developing and evaluated rights-based interventions to improve outcomes for people experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness. We conducted an extensive ethnography to understand lived experience, social contexts and opportunities and constraints for intervention. We carried out a cross-sectional study of over 2000 people experiencing homelessness to understand unmet needs. Based on this formative work and extensive stakeholder engagement we have developed interventions to support identification, engagement and care planning which are being piloted. 

In SCOPE, our aim is to achieve earlier and better care for people with psychosis in Ethiopia to support recovery. We have carried out ethnography of family interactions and involvement and are in the process of recruiting 390 people with psychosis, 390 family carers and 390 controls into a population-based cohort study with 12 months of follow-up. Alongside this we are assessing 50 people experiencing homelessness and psychosis, with in-depth clinical assessment and physical health investigations. The formative work is feeding into three intervention studies:

1) We are developing and piloting a family intervention in Addis Ababa.

2) We will conduct a feasibility randomised controlled trial of an Early Intervention for psychosis integrated within primary healthcare.

3) We will also pilot an intervention for people experiencing homelessness and psychosis in primary care.

In the PROMISE project, we have developed and are evaluating an intervention package to support identification and care for people with psychosis in Malawi.  We carried our extensive qualitative work and theory of change workshops to develop the intervention and implementation strategies. We are currently recruiting people with psychosis into the intervention and will evaluate impact on outcomes over 12 months. 

Current project grants

As Principal Investigator:
2022-2026 National Institute for Health and Care Research: HOPE: NIHR Global Health Research Group on Homelessness and Mental Health in Africa
2022-2027 Wellcome: PROMISE: Psychosis recovery orientation in Malawi by improving services and engagement
2021-2028 Wellcome: SCOPE: Studying the Contexts of recent onset Psychoses in Ethiopia to develop interventions to improve outcomes

As co-investigator
2025-2030 MRC Generation Malawi
2024-2028 NIHR Global Health Research Group in: Community Health Intervention through Music Engagement for Maternal Mental Health (CHIME)
2024-2027 NIHR (Global HPSR) Co-production and piloting of socio-culturally embedded systems strengthening interventions to improve quality of care for people with mental health conditions in Somaliland (CopilotS).
2024-2028 Wellcome Trust: AVATAR therapy implementation and innovation: Testing delivery of standard AVATAR therapy across settings in Africa and South Asia alongside UK-based automation.

Past project grants

2020-2026 National Institute of Health Research: SPARK: SuPporting African communities to increase the Resilience and mental health of Kids with developmental disorders and their caregivers (SPARK): A cluster RCT.

This article was published on