Mental Health

Natalie Peach is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney. She currently works as the Project Coordinator on the COPE-A clinical trial, investigating the efficacy of integrated exposure-based therapy for co-occurring post-traumatic stress and substance use disorders in adolescents.

She completed a combined Masters/PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Health in 2017. Her PhD focused on phenomenological relationships between childhood trauma, PTSD symptoms and psychotic symptoms in young people with early psychosis. Her research interests include adolescent mental health, early intervention, PTSD, substance use, comorbidity and psychosis.

Ivana Kihas began working as a Research Assistant at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) in May 2013. She has worked across three research projects: a post-marketing surveillance study of Suboxone-film, an opioid substitution treatment; a prospective cohort study examining non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids and related harms; and on a randomised control trial investigating the efficacy of a Behavioural Activation Treatment for co-occurring depression and substance use disorder.

Ivana completed a B.Sc. Psychology (Honours) in 2012 at Macquarie University. Her thesis explored the effects of letter confusability on visual word recognition. Between 2012 and 2014, Ivana also worked at the Emotional Health Clinic (Macquarie University) as a Research Assistant on the Cool Kids Stepped Care Program study, working with children, adolescents and their parents to help them overcome anxiety.

Dr Louise Birrell is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use at Sydney University. Louise has extensive experience designing and testing mental health and substance use prevention programs with adolescents. She is committed to better understanding the impact of common mental health and substance use problems at this critical life stage and passionate about designing innovative prevention strategies to enable young people to overcome mental health problems.

She has authored over 10 peer-reviewed publications, one book chapter and is a named investigator on projects totalling over $9 million dollars in competitive research funding. She regularly presents at national and international conferences in the field of youth mental health.

Dr Prior is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Illness and Substance Use Centre of Research Excellence (PREMISE), at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on the co-occurrence of mental health and substance use disorders. She has helped design and coordinate two clinical trials of novel interventions for these comorbid disorders; most recently an online early intervention for young people who drink to cope with anxiety.

It is Katrina’s aspiration to become a leading researcher in the development, evaluation and dissemination of innovative prevention and early intervention programs for co-occurring anxiety and alcohol use problems.

Dr Hobden’s PhD research included some of the first comprehensive Australian based studies to examine comorbid alcohol misuse and depression within general practice and alcohol or other drug services. Dr Hobden has demonstrated high productivity in her research field.

She has published 16 papers (7 as lead author), 1 commissioned report and 3 academic conference abstracts. In addition her work has been presented 13 times at academic conferences. Dr Hobden has established both national and international collaborations during her academic career, including the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in America.

Kylie King is a Senior Research Fellow at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University. She has expertise in male suicide prevention research and mental health program evaluation. She is interested in the capacity for public health interventions to have positive impacts on men’s mental health across the life span.

The project is being undertaken in collaboration with researchers at the University of Melbourne and Orygen, and with Tomorrow Man.

Dr Erin Kelly is a Clinical Psychologist at The Matilda Centre, University of Sydney. She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales, for which she was awarded the Australian Rotary Health and the Alliance for the Prevention of Mental Disorders for Research Excellence Award, PhD Researcher Award (2018). Her research interest is prevention and early intervention for substance use and mental disorders, with a particular focus on adolescents.

She is the lead trainer of the Preventure program in Australia, a personality-focused brief intervention for preventing substance use and mental disorders in adolescents.

Associate Professor Tim Slade is Director of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Matilda Centre for Research in Substance Use and Mental Health, University of Sydney and Program Lead, Biostatistics for the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence for Prevention of Mental Illness and Substance Misuse (PREMISE).

His research program in psychiatric epidemiology aims to improve our understanding of the prevalence, correlates and diagnostic validity of mental and substance use disorders with the aim of informing the next generation of prevention and early intervention responses.