Dr Anna Williams

Anna Williams graduated as a psychologist in Brazil, where she also completed her Masters Degree in Psychiatry. Her Masters project focused on the development and delivery of psycho-educational interventions for crack-cocaine users from shantytowns. Before coming to England, she gained clinical experience working as a psychologist assistant in an inpatient unit for alcohol and drug treatment. For the past three years, she has been working on her PhD project at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. Her research centres on the prevention of fatal heroin overdose by extending training and take-home naloxone to users’ family and social network.  The initial phase of this work involved testing the feasibility of the proposal, developing guidelines for the delivery of overdose training amongst carers and family members and developing valid and reliable measures to test overdose management knowledge and attitudes. The final study of her PhD tests the benefits of overdose training among this population using a randomised trial design. This study is currently being undertaken and is supervised by Professor John Strang and Dr. John Marsden.