Surgeon Commander Charlotte Evans MBChB MSc MRCPsych RN is the Royal Navy Hudson Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. She recently served as the Consultant Advisor in Psychiatry to the Head of Royal Navy Healthcare, where she provided subject matter expertise in her clinical role as a consultant psychiatrist, as well as non-clinical support and advice on mental health and illness on strategic, operational and tactical levels. Alongside her clinical training, she has also conducted deployed mental health research and completed her MSc in Evidence Based Healthcare through the University of Oxford, in which her dissertation focussed on the occupational outcomes for military mental health patients.

Assumptions and myths about mental health and illness in the Armed Forces are plentiful. In this talk Surg Cdr Evans will explore the concept of mental health and mental illness; look at the current reality in the UK Armed Forces; overview the moral component of warfighting; and then look to the overlap of the two. She will then utilise the Royal Navy Mental Health Service as a case study in the support of good mental health and the treatment of illness in support of Operations.