Professor Allison Waters
Mental Health Research
‘Improving the mental health of young Australians in sport: A partnership project with the National Rugby League‘
Griffith University, QLD
Awarded 2019
“The NRL recognises the need to address mental health resilience in their players from a young age.”
Researcher Profile
Professor Allison Waters in Clinical Psychology in the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at The University of Queensland in 2002 and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at The University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 before commencing her work at Griffith University.
Dr Waters’ research focuses on the cognitive-neuroscience of emotional disorders in children and aims to translate findings from laboratory and basic science research into clinical practice using current generation treatments and novel interventions.
She has published 6 book chapters and over 60 peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles in this area, and her research is funded by Australian Rotary Health, the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Queensland Health, and Griffith University. She is the recipient of Griffith University Vice Chancellor and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Health) Awards for Research Excellence (Team Category) and an Australian Psychological Society Early Researcher Career Award in recognition of her research. She is Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Psychology and Psychopathology Review and she serves on the Research Advisory Committee of the Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute.
Professor Waters has supervised to completion the research projects of 26 PhD, Doctorate, Masters and Honours level students enrolled in psychology postgraduate degree programs, and also teaches at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in clinical psychology. She is also a member of the Australian Psychological Society College of Clinical Psychologists.
Project Summary
Mental illness among young Australians is a major public health problem, with young Australians between 18-24 years of age having the highest prevalence of mental illness than any other age group. The National Rugby League (NRL) recognises that mental illness does not discriminate, with many high-profile players publicly revealing their struggles with mental illness and numerous young aspirational players under 20 years of age taking their own lives in recent years. This project involves a novel partnership between the NRL and our team of youth mental health experts at Griffith University to address the need for evidence-based interventions to enhance mental health outcomes for young rugby league players. Over the past 12 months, our team at Griffith developed the “Life-Fit-Learning” system for assessing and reflecting on young peoples’ attributes for mental health resilience and risk status, and connecting them to resources to enhance mental health outcomes.
We have been working with the NRL throughout 2018, pilot testing the RISE Development Program for 13 to 15 year old male players, which embeds the Life-Fit-Learning system within the RISE program to enhance player attributes for positive mental health resilience alongside the promotion of physical, tactical and technical attributes of rugby league. This project will test that the integrated RISE Development Program is more effective in enhancing mental health resilience and outcomes than participation in regular grassroots rugby league. This evidence will support the nationwide roll-out of the RISE program to potentially reach thousands of young Australians in partnership with one of the nations’ largest sporting organisations.
Co-Investigators: Dr Wayne Usher, A/Professor Lara Farrell, A/Professor Caroline Donovan, Dr Kathryn Modecki & Professor Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck