Tonelle Handley
University of Newcastle, NSW
Rotary Club of Parramatta City
Youth Suicide
2010
Tonelle Handley is a PhD candidate with the Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research at the University of Newcastle. She completed a Bachelor of Social Science at the University of Newcastle in 2008, majoring in psychology. During this time she also obtained employment as an administrative assistant at a local psychology clinic, furthering her interest in this area.
In 2009 she undertook a Graduate Diploma in Psychology, completing her thesis on facial recognition memory. She followed this with a postgraduate summer scholarship with the Priority Research Centre for Health Behaviour, investigating the effects of increasing pre-service teacher training on their attitudes towards teaching and managing sensitive issues.
Tonelle’s Australian Roatry Health/Rotary Club of Parramatta City funded PhD project involves developing a pilot intervention to prevent rural youth suicide.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
Suicide in Australia: Determinants, moderators and treatment options for suicidal thoughts and behaviours
This PhD project will focus on the persistence of depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation and factors associated with depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation, across urban, rural and regional communities.
This is part of a three year funded program of research, commencing in 2010, that will focus on the role of social networks, relationship breakdown and depression as potential risk factors to suicide across rural and regional communities. This program aims to respond to the critical need for effective and accessible interventions to address rural suicide risk and mental health needs, including depression and alcohol use problems.
The study aims to examine the association between social factors and relationship breakdown with depression and suicidal ideation in rural communities. These findings will inform the adaptation and piloting of existing interventions to address depression and related relationship breakdown
Before interventions can be implemented, robust and comprehensive observational datasets that enable us to identify the main drivers of this rural/urban disparity in suicide rates are needed, including depression and substance use, in order to develop and target the most effective interventions.
The proposed research builds upon existing data sets to quickly inform strategies to assist in addressing depression, related relationship breakdown and suicide risk among people in rural communities. It will incorporate the development of a pilot intervention combining existing effective interventions for depression and risk factors for suicide (such as substance use and family breakdown) and will pave the way for a larger scale intervention.