Meet the Expert: Professor Cherie Armour
Welcome to 'Meet the Expert', our news series that brings you informative interviews with Armed Forces researchers, policy makers, and service providers. Read on to learn about current work, aspirations for progress and future work, and insights into expert perspectives on key issues impacting the Armed Forces community.
In this issue, we interviewed Professor Cherie Armour, Professor of Psychological Trauma and Mental Health at the School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast and Director of the Research Centre for Stress Trauma and Related Conditions (STARC). The primary focus of Professor Armour's research is the mental health of those who have experienced stress, adversity, and trauma.
1. Please tell us about your background and how you came to be involved in work relating to the Armed Forces community?
My interest in the Armed Forces community most likely stems from being part of that community from a very young age. In fact, a large part of my childhood was spent in a Royal Air Force (RAF) military airbase near Wildenrath in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany and then in RAF Lossiemouth, a military airfield located on the western edge of the town of Lossiemouth in Moray, North-East Scotland. Indeed, some of my clearest and fondest childhood memories are from summers spent on camp in RAF Wildenrath. My sister and I spent a lot of time cycling around camp in swimwear, heading to the outdoor pool, and buying treats at the Navy, Army and Air Force Institute (NAAFI) shop. During this time, I also developed a sense that people could experience very similar life events but respond in quite different ways. I feel like this concept has been of interest to me for as long as I can remember.
This led me to study Psychology in an attempt to understand why people have so many differences in the way they think and behave. The year I started my degree, I watched a film called "The Butterfly Effect". This 2004 science fiction thriller explored the consequences of altering past events through time travel. It goes through many scenarios in which the long-term outcomes become dramatically different (both positive and negative) based on momentary changes in actions in the past. This intensified my interest, not in time travel, but in the idea that small decisions and or changes in life events (our life experiences) can have large and enduring consequences. During my undergraduate degree, I was introduced to Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as an outcome of experiencing traumatic life events, and this really set things in stone for me that this is what I wanted to study. I explored PhD opportunities in the area, initially hoping to study this in the Armed Forces community, but that was not possible at the time, and so I worked with epidemiological databases, developing my understanding of Trauma, PTSD and Psychosis with a good helping of quantitative methods training.
The next stage of my career was a postdoctoral position working in Denmark at the University of Southern Denmark. I worked on a large-scale secondary data analysis project looking retrospectively at childhood adversity and trauma and how it impacted a range of social and psychological outcomes. I was very fortunate to have a high degree of independence in this position to work on many research projects, including joining the PhD supervision team for a project using data from military populations in both Denmark and Israel. At the same time, I was attending conferences and building collaborations with people who worked with military populations in the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US.
In 2012, I was offered my first lectureship position at Ulster University, and it was time to write my own Principal Investigator (PI) grants and develop a programme of research. Given my prior collaborations, I had become acutely aware that no one was conducting research in the Armed Forces community in Northern Ireland (NI). There were some very likely socio-political and historical reasons for this; however, after some extensive relationship building in the Armed Forces support sector in NI, I applied for funding to conduct two large research projects, which were successful. In combination, these projects formed the Northern Ireland Veterans' Health and Wellbeing Study (NIVHWS). Fast forward seven years, and the team moved from Ulster University to Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). Since 2019, we have continued conducting research with the Armed Forces community regionally, nationally, and internationally and hope to keep doing so for the foreseeable future.
2. What research projects are you currently working on and how do they fit into the bigger picture of understanding and supporting the Armed Forces community?
Alongside my colleague, Professor Nicola T. Fear from King’s Centre for Military Health Research at King’s College London, we have recently completed the UK Veterans Family Study with our collaborators from all four nations of the UK. This was a truly fantastic piece of work. Of course, as with many research projects, it came with challenges, but the end result was a series of reports that explored the in-depth situation for family members of those who Served in the UK Armed Forces. I am excited to be working with colleagues on some follow up academic papers from this study.
A second piece of research that is currently underway and due to be completed at the start of 2026, focuses on suicidality risk in ex-Service personnel living in Northern Ireland. In this project, we have three components. The first is a meta-analysis of risk and resilience factors for suicidality, the second is a secondary data analysis of the NIVHWS data looking at predictors of a suicidality outcome, and the third is an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study exploring suicidality risk in ex-Service personnel in NI. These three parts will be combined into a report for the Forces in Mind Trust, which funded the work, and then subsequently into three academic papers for publication.
A third piece of ongoing research related to a collaboration I have with Professor Jackie Sturt and colleagues from across the UK. Indeed, we have just completed a randomised controlled feasibility trial comparing two treatment modalities of reconsolidation of traumatic memories and trauma-focussed cognitive behaviour therapy for PTSD in UK ex-Service personnel. Recently, we were awarded NIHR funding to further develop this work. We are currently in the process of setting everything up, including hiring postdoctoral researchers.
Regarding how they fit into the bigger picture of understanding and supporting the Armed Forces community, the first two of these projects have focused on sub-populations within the Armed Forces community who have received less research attention and thus in turn have been lacking an evidence base upon which policy makers and service providers can optimise the support available. A theme of my research programme within the Armed Forces community has, to date, been aligned with hidden and often hard to reach sub-populations – that doesn’t make recruitment very easy. Still, we have developed some strategies here, and we do try our best to engage people where we can. The third project tackles a much needed agenda whereby we simply require improved treatments for those suffering from PTSD so that we can attempt to improve the quality of care and help people to get better and ideally get better faster!
3. What other research or policy areas relating to the Armed Forces community are you especially passionate about or feel need further attention?
I always find this question really difficult because it feels like being asked to pick a favourite. I think it's all really important. You could choose any topic, be it women and children, domestic violence survivors, those with chronic pain, those experiencing suicidality, those with life-limiting or terminal conditions, homelessness, addiction (the list goes on), and we could make a rationale for why we should do more to support these groups. In general, we just don’t do enough, but this is not the fault of any particular individual – we are all working very hard to do our piece, and very often we are doing a great job with the resources available to us. However, that last point is key, we can only do what we can do with the resources we have, and unfortunately there is often a lack of funding and many systemic barriers in our way. So overall, I am passionate about anything that can improve the health and wellbeing of those in the Armed Forces community, and this is probably why my work and topics that I study and publish on can be quite varied. I tend not to just focus on one particular area (well, unless that area is trauma – but that’s very broad!). This also comes from my belief that not just one thing will be the ‘panacea’ to remedy all challenges. Risk and resilience related to health and wellbeing is multi-factorial and complex.
4. What are your future aspirations for the impact and utilization of your work/research?
I have spent a lot of time producing academic evidence for ex-Service personnel’s health and wellbeing in Northern Ireland, and we have seen some very positive changes. In particular, our work led to the initiation of the Veterans Support Office (VSO), led by the wonderful Liz Brown. The VSO was instrumental in pushing forward new initiatives and supporting those in the voluntary and community sector who, in turn, support ex-Service personnel in Northern Ireland. There have been subsequent changes to structures here, but I am confident that the VSO has left a positive legacy upon which further support and initiatives can be built. My team and I are committed to the further production of academic evidence that has this kind of impact. We are in a fortunate position that we now have quite a lot of data from our ex-Service personnel in NI, and we have excellent relationships across the sector. So, I am confident that we can continue to push forward together in our efforts to provide the optimal support for those ex-Service personnel who need it. I am also excited about the NIHR trial mentioned above, where we are now fully assessing the reconsolidation of traumatic memories protocol, which aims to be quicker and more effective than trauma-focused CBT – of course, we don’t truly know if this is the case, so it’ll be great to find out one way or the other. The trial is being run by a fantastic team led by Professor Jackie Sturt, and it’s a pleasure to collaborate with them. Likewise, the Veterans Family Study (another fantastic collaboration with Professor Nicola Fear) has produced some great data, and I hope we can find ways to delve further into that and both ask and answer some important research questions for ex-Service personnel families across the UK.
5. Can you tell us about the methods you tend to use in your research, and why you gravitate towards these kinds of approaches?
I was trained in quantitative methods and, in particular, survey methodologies and advanced statistics, so this will always be my comfort zone. However, over time, I have also been interested in qualitative methods, and I see real value in speaking with people to understand their perspectives on their own lived experience. Where possible, a mixed-methods approach offers the best of both worlds, and so I try to always think of ways to embed both methodologies into my core research questions. I also really quite enjoy trying out new methods when the opportunity arises. Recently, I supervised an ESRC fellowship at QUB, which gave us the opportunity to learn ecological momentary assessment methods. The paper has just been published. The key thing in research, however, is to really think about the research question you want to ask and then let the methods you use flow from that.
6. What do you think will be the leading challenges for the next generation of ex-Service personnel, and how do you think research and/or policy can be best used to address them?
This is a really important but difficult question. Difficult because, unfortunately, I think the challenges will be many. They will be shaped by recent conflicts (and unfortunately, most likely future conflicts), advances in technology and AI in particular, and the ever changing social and economic landscape at home and abroad. I also believe that from a health and wellbeing perspective, we will see more complex co-occurring conditions requiring the development of more effective treatments, perhaps with a focus on transdiagnostic symptoms, which are developed and implemented by multi-disciplinary professionals. I think there will be ongoing issues around accessing care and navigating the NHS. The postcode lottery will likely be a factor, with ex-Service personnel receiving variations in the care and support available based on where they live. Added to this are ongoing concerns around employment and housing, or lack thereof. There are also challenges related to navigating the benefits system (thankfully improving due to the excellent work of Professor Lisa Scullion). Given issues in the housing space around things like affordability and availability, we might see an increase in ex-Service personnel experiencing homelessness (or in sofa-surfing and unstable accommodation arrangements – these things are known to impact mental health).
More generally, I think success going forward from a government and policy perspective is a joined-up government approach to initiatives, a call for more research directly aligned to government priorities for ex-Service personnel, and more resources given to existing initiatives that are showing themselves to be effective. I also think that more efforts should be put into developing parity of esteem across ALL four nations of the UK – someone who Served in Northern Ireland should be afforded the same opportunities for help, support, and treatments as someone who Served in England. I, of course, want to acknowledge that there is a lot of excellent work going on in the sector that is attempting to meet these challenges.
7. Given unlimited funding and time, what would be your dream piece of research to undertake involving the Armed Forces community?
Absolutely unrealistic (just like the idea of having unlimited funding and time!), but it would be great to do a large scale comparison study based on how the world is now and how it would be if we were to travel back in time and prevent war and suffering. However, as we saw from the film ‘The Butterfly Effect’, maybe we wouldn’t find what we might expect.
Many thanks to Professor Cherie Armour for sharing her insights.
Catch us next month for another interesting and informative interview with an expert from the Armed Forces community.
