My main research interest is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents. I mainly utilise prospective longitudinal, case control and clinical trial study designs. My research looks at:

- the natural course of post-traumatic stress

- early identification of youth at high risk of chronic difficulties

- the cognitive psychological mechanisms shaping responses to trauma in this age group

- the effects of genetic and psychophysiological factors in moderating responses to trauma

- psychological therapies for PTSD in youth

- PTSD in children and adolescents exposed to multiple traumatic stressors

- PTSD in preschool children

Richard Meiser-Stedman has studied PTSD in children and teenagers since 2000. He studied for his PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, where he was funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) research studentship. He was awarded a Peggy Pollak Research Fellowship in Developmental Psychiatry to undertake further postdoctoral research into childhood PTSD, with a particular focus on PTSD in young and preschool children. He completed his clinical psychology training at the Institute of Psychiatry.

From 2009 to 2014 Dr Meiser-Stedman was an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. While there he led the ASPECTS study, looking at whether PTSD in children and adolescents can be successfully treated using cognitive therapy in the early aftermath of a trauma. He was also awarded an MRC Centenary Award Grant to conduct a pilot trial looking at the treatment of PTSD following multiple traumas in children and adolescents.

He is a co-investigator on the PYCES trial (the treatment of PTSD in preschool children) and the PROTECT study (looking at how families shape children’s responses to trauma). Dr Meiser-Stedman joined University of East Anglia in October 2014.

From 2016 to 2020 Dr Meiser-Stedman undertook an NIHR Career Development Fellowship. This Fellowship focused on evaluating the efficacy of cognitive therapy for PTSD in children and adolescents who have been exposed to multiple traumas. The results of this study entitled DECRYPT, were published in World Psychiatry in 2025. 

In 2025 he moved to KCL but remains an honorary research fellow at UEA.