Dr David John Hallford is a registered Clinical Psychologist and Research Fellow at Deakin University. His clinical work has focused on treating mental illness in young adults. He is an early career researcher, publishing over 35 peer-reviewed articles. He leads projects with collaborators in Europe, India and Australia to develop and trial novel interventions to improve treatment of depressive disorders.

His current research focuses on difficulties in mental illness in retrieving autobiographical memories and imagining future experiences, both crucial to healthy psychological functioning. He studies the causes of these difficulties, and their impact on cognitive, emotional, and behavioural outcomes.

Clinical depression is highly prevalent in youth, and associated with significant burden and increased risk of suicide. Current treatments for youth depression produce only modest outcomes on average, and therefore many help-seekers symptoms are not effectively treated. To address this, this project will evaluate an intervention to improve outcomes of treatment for youth depression. The intervention targets a known difficulty in depression in retrieving specific and detailed memories of past experiences. The ability to do this is central in important processes such as planning, problem-solving, socialising, and regulating emotions. The project will evaluate whether adding a computerised, automated intervention to help improve memory specificity (Memory Specificity Training) will improve outcomes for depressed youth receiving treatment at mental health services.

All participants will receive their usual care at participating mental health services, but half will be randomly chosen to also receive Memory Specificity Training. The predicted outcomes are lower rates of depressive disorder, less severe symptoms, and improve memory specificity in the group that receives Memory Specificity Training. We will monitor outcomes after the intervention, and at follow-up points of 3 and 6 months

Co-Investigators: Professor David Austin, Dr Keisuke Takano, Professor Filip Raes & A/Professor Mathew Fullur-Tyszkiewicz