Cherie Armour

Queen's University Belfast | QUB · School of Psychology

While substantial prevalence rates of intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) have been found among university students for decades in North America, there is a specific gap in published studies on this issue in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The present analysis used data from a larger survey study of students in one Northern Irish university. Th...

Background Early studies of common mental disorders (CMDs) during the COVID-19 pandemic mainly report increases; however, more recent findings have been mixed. Also, studies assessing the effects of restriction measures on CMDs show varied results. The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess changes in levels of CMDs from pre-/early to during the p...

Objectives Little is known about whether distress tolerance and anxiety mediate the relationship between comorbid complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and alcohol use among military veterans. Here, we investigated the contribution of distress tolerance and anxiety on the strength of the CPTSD and alcohol use association. We hypothesized th...

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs more commonly in military veterans than the general population. Whilst current therapies are effective, up to half of veterans commencing treatment do not complete it. Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories (RTM) protocol is a novel, easy to train, talking therapy with promising findings. We ex...

Introduction The multiorgan impact of moderate to severe coronavirus infections in the post-acute phase is still poorly understood. We aimed to evaluate the excess burden of multiorgan abnormalities after hospitalisation with COVID-19, evaluate their determinants, and explore associations with patient-related outcome measures. Methods In a prospec...

Whilst prevalence rates of unwanted sexual experiences (USEs) and their association on Higher Education Institution students have been extensively researched for decades in the United States of America (US), there is a dearth of published studies on this topic in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland. The current study reviewed existing peer-reviewed...

Background The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study is a large cohort of individuals with lifetime anxiety and/or depression, designed to facilitate re-contact of participants for mental health research. At the start of the pandemic, participants from three cohorts, including the GLAD Study, were invited to join the COVID-19 Psychia...

Background: There is evidence to suggest that the experience of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) may be commonly associated with elevated risk for several mental ill-health comorbidities.Objective: The current study seeks to contribute to the growing literature on C-PTSD comorbidity by examining the relationship between C-PTSD and ot...

Objectives: People with bipolar disorder who also report binge eating have increased psychopathology and greater impairment than those without binge eating. Whether this co-occurrence is related to binge eating as a symptom or presents differently across full-syndrome eating disorders with binge eating is unclear. Methods: We first compared netw...

Background Previous research suggests that auditory hallucinations are prevalent within both the clinical and general populations. Yet, we know little about how these phenomena are associated with other psychopathology symptoms and experiences. The current study aids investigations towards preventing, predicting and more effectively responding to s...

Background: The risk factors for recovery from COVID-19 dyspnoea are poorly understood. We investigated determinants of recovery from dyspnoea in adults with COVID-19 and compared these to determinants of recovery from non-COVID-19 dyspnoea. Methods: We used data from two prospective cohort studies: PHOSP-COVID (patients hospitalised between Mar...

Background: There are two primary competing diagnostic criteria for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). These systems differ in terms of the number and nature of PTSD symptoms, the implied latent structure of the disorder, and associated post-trau...

The variation in the definition of a veteran, and the preference for quantitative methods, has created mixed findings regarding the process of veteran help-seeking (HS) for mental health/alcohol issues. To understand HS enablers/barriers for those having ceased military employment, a systematic review of qualitative HS literature is warranted. Six...

Lack of sexual consent forms the foundation of unwanted (and nonconsensual) sexual experiences (USEs), yet research suggests it is not well understood amongst university students. While the prevalence of USEs has been well documented within the university context, less is known about how sexual consent is defined or measured. This review aims to id...

Objective: Research exploring the enablers and barriers that exist for military veterans seeking to address their poor mental health has produced ambiguous results. To identify the enablers and barriers correctly, this study systematically reviews the literature, including research that included alcohol and had a clearly defined veteran population...

Coercive control and related research have progressed significantly in the past number of years, with an ever-growing evidence base adding to its construct. However, currently there is a lack of evidence on young people’s knowledge and understanding of coercive control. We included a module of questions in the 2020 Northern Ireland Young Life and L...

Providing efficient psychosocial support for survivors of sexual assault is of critical societal importance. Around the globe, technology-based solutions (eHealth) are increasingly being used to accomplish this task, especially following COVID-19. Despite increased importance and reliance on eHealth for sexual assault, minimal efforts have been mad...

LAY SUMMARY Experiencing stressful or traumatic events in childhood has been linked with negative outcomes later in adulthood, one of which is involvement with the criminal justice system. This study explored whether there was a relationship between experiencing stressful life events in childhood and incarceration in adulthood (post-military servic...

Background: The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study is a large cohort of individuals with lifetime anxiety and/or depression, designed to facilitate re-contact of participants for mental health research. At the start of the pandemic, participants from three cohorts, including the GLAD Study, were invited to join the COVID-19 Psychi...

The study of psychological resilience outcomes post-trauma has grown in popularity, however the theoretical processes promoting wellbeing remains disparate and contested. Recent research has sought to quantitatively validate the Flexibility Sequence theory, however the evidence base lacks granular assessment of how the processes within this theory...

Background Progress towards stratified care for anxiety and depression will require the identification of new predictors. We collected data on retrospectively self-reported therapeutic outcomes in adults who received psychological therapy in the UK in the past ten years. We aimed to replicate factors associated with traditional treatment outcome me...

The relationship between posttraumatic stress (PTS) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) has been extensively studied; however, the nature of the relationship remains unclear. Inconsistencies in the literature could be, in part, due to the use of variable level approaches. Person centered methods may further our understanding of this relationship, as the...

The study investigated reactions to research participation that university students in Northern Ireland had after participating in a survey on sexual violence.

Background Anxiety and depressive disorders often co-occur and the order of their emergence may be associated with different clinical outcomes. However, minimal research has been conducted on anxiety-anxiety comorbidity. This study examined factors associated with anxiety comorbidity and anxiety-MDD temporal sequence. Methods Online, self-report d...

Objective: The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with poor mental health, including increases in eating disorders and self-harm symptoms. We investigated risk and protective factors for the new onset of these symptoms during the pandemic. Method: Data were from the COVID-19 Psychiatry and Neurological Genetics study...

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs more commonly in military veterans than the general population. Whilst current therapies are effective, up to half of veterans commencing treatment don’t complete it. Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories (RTM) protocol is a novel, easy to train, talking therapy with promising US findings. We...

Compared to US university students, far less is known about the scale of unwanted and non-consensual sexual experiences [USEs] faced by UK university students, particularly those in Northern Ireland [NI]. The Sexual Experiences Survey (Short Form [SEF-SFV]) is considered a popular tool for measuring USEs but has not been updated since 2007; there i...

The report focuses on unwanted sexual experiences among Northern Irish university students

Background: Psychological resilience has grown in popularity as a topic of study in psychotraumatology research; however, this concept remains poorly understood and there are several competing theories of resilience. Objective: This study sought to assess the support for one proposed theory of resilience: the flexibility sequence. Method: This stud...

Background In response to COVID-19 there have been lockdowns and restrictions to hospitality services. Drinking behaviours often change in response to traumatic events and changes in the drinking environment, and this is influenced by a range of factors. This study explores self-reported changes in alcohol consumption in the third month of the UK l...

The objective of this study is to review recent literature on the prevalence rates of unwanted sexual experiences (USEs) of higher education institution (HEI) students in the USA, UK and Ireland. The following review questions posed are as follows: 1. What are the estimated prevalence rates of unwanted sexual experiences among HEI students? 2. W...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals are exposed to extreme hazards and workplace stressors. Social media postings by physicians and nurses related to COVID-19 from January 21st to June 1st 2020 were obtained from the Reddit website. Topic modeling via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) using a machine-learning approach was perform...

Introduction Sleep disturbances (SDs), such as insomnia or regular nightmares, are associated with multiple mental health disorders, most notably PTSD, where SDs are reported in up to 92% of cases. Examining the effect of changing sleep on psychological symptomology is essential to develop the evidence base on the contribution of sleep to mental re...

Introduction An established body of literature has identified that PTSD and dissociation are comorbid. Furthermore, the DSM introduced a dissociative subtype of PTSD into their most recent update; DSM-5. Objectives The current study aimed to examine symptom-level associations between PTSD and dissociation using network analysis among UK Armed Forc...

The accurate definition and assessment of trauma exposure is the foundation for replicable studies of mental health problems following trauma exposure. However, scales developed to assess trauma exposure might vary widely in terms of item content; overlap; and specifications of trauma intensity, frequency, duration, and timing. We compared eight fr...

Military-to-civilian community reintegration in Northern Irish (NI) veterans has not been previously examined. The existing reintegration studies indicate that post-military service life can be challenging for many veterans. The current exploratory study aimed to identify service-related predictors of community reintegration difficulties in a sampl...

Objective: The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with poor mental health, including increases in eating disorder and self-harm symptoms. We investigated risk and protective factors for new onset of these symptoms during the pandemic. Method: Data were from the COVID-19 Psychiatry and Neurological Genetics study and the...

Insights gained from lived experience of mental health issues are increasingly utilised in the delivery of mental health services, reflecting a growing recognition of the value of experiential knowledge. Despite this recognition, there is a dearth of literature on the lived experience of counsellors and psychotherapists, and as such, insight into h...

Background To deliver appropriate mental healthcare interventions and support, it is imperative to be able to distinguish one person from the other. The current classification of mental illness (e.g., DSM) is unable to do that well, indicating the problem of diagnostic heterogeneity between disorders (i.e., the disorder categories have many common...

Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has long been debated with a recent focus on the consequences of having two different diagnostic descriptions of PTSD (i.e., the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition [DSM-5] and the International Classification of Diseases-11th Edition [ICD-11]). Research has modeled PT...

Military service, mental health, and gambling activities and motivations as predictors of problem gambling in a sample of UK AF veterans. Age-and-gender matched veterans (n = 1,037) and non-veterans (n = 1,148) completed an online survey of problem gambling, gambling motivation, mental health (depression and anxiety), and posttraumatic stress disor...

Background No effective pharmacological or non-pharmacological interventions exist for patients with long COVID. We aimed to describe recovery 1 year after hospital discharge for COVID-19, identify factors associated with patient-perceived recovery, and identify potential therapeutic targets by describing the underlying inflammatory profiles of the...

Background: Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) describes the results of complex, prolonged, and/or inescapable trauma, and is typified by avoidance, re-experiencing, sense of threat, affect dysregulation, negative self-concept, and interpersonal disturbances. Additionally, CPTSD is highly comorbid with other common psychopathologies. Ob...

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a worldwide societal concern. Adversities such as IPV are known to impinge upon mental health and socio-economic development. However, much of the existing literature addresses single or dual constructs of IPV abuse rather than capturing the more common polyvictimisation experience and how they impact on mental he...

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociation have long been associated with each other. In recent years, studies have examined support for the dissociative subtype of PTSD in several different populations. To date, no study has examined whether this subtype exists in UK Armed Forces military veterans residing in Northern Irelan...

Background: Trauma and adverse experiences among perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) have been associated with more serious patterns of offending. Objective: To examine 1) how traumatic and adverse experiences cluster together and co-occur among IPV perpetrators, and 2) whether different patterns of trauma exposure are associated wit...

Coercive control is characterised by negative behaviours which intimidate, threaten, and humiliate a person or restrict a person’s liberty. In addition to being a known risk factor for experiencing other forms of violence, research has linked coercive control to symptoms of psychological distress and suicidality. In the UK, coercive and controlling...

This is a brief description of a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The scoping review will synthesize the literature pertaining to eHealth interventions targeting the psychosocial impacts of sexual assault.

LAY SUMMARY Military service can affect the psychological health and well-being of ex-service members and their families. Most research prioritizes active duty families or Veterans, with spouses/intimate partners and adult children of Veterans often overlooked. This study reviewed all previous research on the psychological health of Veteran familie...

Background: Trauma is often experienced comorbidly, especially for military veterans. Veterans exposed to political/post-political conflict may experience unique trauma comorbidities. Many Northern Ireland (NI) veterans were impacted by the Troubles conflict and remain within a society that is shaped by the Troubles’ legacy. It is useful to underst...

Introduction Military veterans are at heightened risk of problem gambling. Little is known about the costs of problem gambling and related harm among United Kingdom (UK) Armed Forces (AF) veterans. We investigated the social and economic costs of gambling among a large sample of veterans through differences in healthcare and social service resource...

Background Understanding and improving outcomes for people with anxiety or depression often requires large sample sizes. To increase participation and reduce costs, such research is typically unable to utilise “gold-standard” methods to ascertain diagnoses, instead relying on remote, self-report measures. Aims Assess the comparability of remote di...

Background Generalized anxiety and depression are extremely prevalent and debilitating. There is evidence for age and sex variability in symptoms of depression, but despite comorbidity it is unclear whether this extends to anxiety symptomatology. Studies using questionnaire sum scores typically fail to address this phenotypic complexity. Method We...

Experiencing traumatic events is unfortunately commonplace and, in some cases, may lead to the onset of debilitating mental health disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Current diagnostic criteria for PTSD results in high depression and anxiety comorbidity. Better understanding of biological mechanisms and pathways underlying PT...

Background Reported trauma is associated with differences in the course and outcomes of depression and anxiety. However, no research has explored the association between reported trauma and patterns of clinically relevant symptoms of both depression and anxiety. Methods We used network analysis to investigate associations between reported trauma a...

COVID-19 has had a negative impact on the mental health of individuals. The aim of the COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study was to identify trajectories of anxiety, depression and COVID-19-related traumatic stress symptomology during the first UK national lockdown. We also sought to explore risk and protective factors. The study was a longitudina...

Background: Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) was recently included in the revised International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2018). C-PTSD is a new trauma related disorder which may develop after prolonged and multiple exposures to trauma. It is a sister disorder of PTSD and is further cha...

The present study examined the efficacy of Hopeful Minds, a 12 week hope based school intervention programme in a sample of 153 pre- and early- adolescent secondary school children (11–14 years) in the North West of Ireland. This study used a one-group, pretest-posttest design to determine whether participants experienced changes regarding their ho...

Objectives Vaccine hesitancy is a growing concern and threat to public health. This research will begin to examine the relative influence of relevant psychological, social, and situational factors on intent to engage with a hypothetical COVID‐19 vaccine among key workers and non‐key workers. Design Cross‐sectional. Methods The study utilized a sa...

Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms may impact cognitive processes underlying encoding and retrieval of positive memories. Contractor and colleagues thus proposed a Positive Memory-PTSD model outlining hypothesized pathways (e.g., improved cognitions and affect) linking active processing of positive memories and PTSD symptoms....

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is highly comorbid with sleep dysfunction. This association was previously explained based on cognitive and emotional dysfunction. The current study extends this literature by investigating the symptom level comorbidity of sleep dysfunction and DSM-5 PTSD utilizing a network approach. Participants were trauma-ex...

Aim As individuals adjust to new ‘norms’ and ways of living during the COVID-19 lockdown, there is a continuing need for up-to-date information and guidance. Evidence suggests that frequent media exposure is related to a higher prevalence of mental health problems, especially anxiety and depression. The aim of this study was to determine whether CO...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use are highly prevalent among military veteran populations. Several theories have been proposed to account for the comorbidity between PTSD and problematic alcohol use, but research examining the symptom‐level associations between the two is limited. The current study used network analysis to examin...

Background: Little research has examined the impact of working within the context of COVID-19 on UK healthcare professionals (HCPs) mental health and well-being, despite previous pandemic findings indicating that HCPs are particularly vulnerable to suffering PTSD and other mental health difficulties due to the nature of healthcare work. Specificall...

The COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study was designed and implemented as a rapid survey of the psychosocial impacts of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), known as COVID-19 in residents across the United Kingdom. This study utilised a longitudinal design to collect online survey based data. The aim of this pape...

Background: The experience of childhood adversities, particularly those related to maltreatment and household dysfunction, has been consistently documented in the extant literature as having a detrimental impact on psychological wellbeing across the life course, including adverse outcomes such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders and PTSD. Previous...

Background: The posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis has been widely debated since it was introduced into the diagnostic nomenclature four decades ago. Recently, the debate has focused on consequences of having two different descriptions of PTSD: 20 symptoms belonging to four symptom clusters in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Me...

Background Longitudinal studies examining the temporal association between mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 outbreak are needed. It is important to determine how relationships between key outcomes, specifically loneliness and depressive symptoms, manifest over a brief timeframe and in a pandemic context. Method Data was gathered over 4 m...

Background Previous reviews of interventions to prevent recidivistic intimate partner violence (IPV) have cited minimal benefits and have been critical of interventions adopting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to a heterogenous category of offenders. The present systematic review and meta-analysis assesses evidence for interventions situated in a ri...