Mental Health and Well Being Group

Mental Health and Well Being Group

Improving wellbeing and reducing the burden of mental health problems is the primary focus of a broad body of research being carried out by the Menzies Institute for Medical Research’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Research Group.

Formed in earlier 2019, the group has been researching the profile of mental health and wellbeing and its impacts in a variety of settings including workplaces, families of emergency service workers and the health system.

The group’s most recent work, led by group founder Dr Amanda Neil, was a study of mental health presentations in hospital emergency departments published in Emergency Medicine Australasia 2019.

The paper is intended as the first in a series of publications to examine trends in presentations to emergency departments, particularly mental health presentations nationally, and is the first paper from Menzies’ PhD Candidate Quang Nhat Tran.

“Based on national data, this paper looked at long term trend of mental health presentations and found there had been an increase [in rates of presentations and the proportion of all ED presentations with a mental health diagnosis] across every single age group – with the highest being [in] children,” Dr Neil said.

“Across the board presentations have increased as have general ED rates so the overall burden on emergency departments is increasing too.”

The group was recently boosted by the appointment of Professor Angela Martin as Professor of Work and Mental Health, who extends and strengthens the multidisciplinary base of expertise in mental health and wellbeing research at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research.

Contacts:

Dr Amanda Neil: Amanda.Neil@utas.edu.au (Phone: (03)6226 4640)

Prof Angela Martin: Angela.Martin@utas.edu.au

Email: