Expanding horizons on mental health and substance use research

I recently completed my PhD in Psychology at the University of Queensland in sunny Brisbane. My research interests encompass social, developmental, and clinical psychology, with a focus on investigating social and affective predictors of mental health. In particular, I’m interested in understanding factors that contribute to psychological distress and how early life experiences influence mental health later in life via mediators such as emotion regulation. 

My PhD research investigated variation in emotion regulation, psychological distress, and compassionate responding across adult attachment patterns. In collaboration with one of my PhD supervisors, Associate Professor James Kirby, I evaluated a brief Compassion Focused Therapy intervention aimed at improving compassion and mental health-related outcomes and conducted the first meta-analytic review of associations between adult attachment and difficulties related to compassionate experiences. I also reviewed patterns in subjective reports of distress and compassionate responding in everyday life settings using Experience Sampling Methods/Ecological Momentary Assessment.

I’m now excited to be working here at the Matilda Centre with Associate Professor Matthew Sunderland. Our project aims to examine age, period, and cohort trends in psychological distress over time by harmonizing large population-based datasets from the past 40 years.

I hope to enhance our understanding of psychological distress and its determinants in the Australian population, providing essential information to inform further development of interventions, services, and policies.

I’m also hugely excited by the opportunity to contribute to research that enhances our understanding of determinants of mental health or furthers the development and evaluation of much-needed interventions. I’m keen to get involved, apply my data-analytic skills to new projects, and learn as much as I can.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, at the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, and The CREATE Centre, in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I am currently investigating play and its effects on mental health and wellbeing in childhood.  

My research focus is on qualitative aspects of physical activity and their impact on cognition and social and emotional learning in primary school children, with a view to improve teaching pedagogy in schools and wellbeing during childhood. My motivation for this topic began during my time teaching yoga and dance in inner city London primary schools as a way to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. I aim to develop a sustainable way to apply my findings through Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for primary school teachers.

I would like to share and scale it with educators and teachers through Continuing Professional Development.

I recently joined the Matilda Centre after finishing my PhD at the University of Melbourne, where I used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to examine structural brain changes in adolescents with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (or ‘ME/CFS’ for short). 

I am so excited to now be working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Associate Professor Louise Mewton to examine relationships between alcohol use and brain health in adolescents, exploring both the impact of alcohol use on brain development and predictive factors associated with early alcohol use initiation. 

While working at the Matilda Centre I hope to absorb as much knowledge as I can from the Centre's area of expertise – specifically, understanding risk factors associated with substance use and mental health conditions in adolescence.

While much of my research to date has focused on the impact of lifestyle risk factors, mental health conditions and neuropathology on brain health and neurodevelopment, much less of my time has been spent examining the demographic, psychosocial and genetic factors predisposing young persons to such conditions. 

As these factors also have a natural role to play in brain health and neurodevelopment, I hope to use my time at the Matilda Centre to develop a greater understanding of the interaction between these risk factors and substance use, mental health, and neurodevelopmental outcomes, which I hope will enable me to grow as a more holistic researcher overall.

I completed my PhD at the University of Queensland with Professor Leanne Hides. My PhD centred around social determinants of substance use, and co-investigating the utility of an applied social network intervention for reducing substance use among residential college students. The social network intervention (led by Professor Hides) went on to receive funding from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) to roll out across QLD, NSW and VIC, in the coming years.

I then moved to the US and worked on a National Institutes of Health collaboration project with principal investigators at University of Cincinnati and Brown University, exploring the potential to screen for and intervene with hazardous drinking among non-college-attending young adults from diverse backgrounds.

At the Matilda Centre, I will be working on the Health4Life Parents and Teens project with Dr Katrina Champion and team, which will aim to prevent the onset of chronic disease in later life, by educating teens and their parents about the ‘Big 6’ health behaviours associated with chronic disease.

In the coming years, I hope to strengthen my skills regarding prevention and early intervention methods for a range of health behaviours. I am excited by the opportunity to continue my substance use research, while branching into other critical health behaviours. I hope to continue publishing on the power of social influence mechanisms, and related early intervention concepts and trials.

I am interested in using emerging technologies and methods (e.g. social media, social network analysis, e-health interventions, biosensors), to prevent the onset of health challenges among young people. Increasingly, I am interested in focusing such research on supporting the health of young people in underserved communities, which is something I am lucky to be practising through my postdoctoral positions.