Research strand
Simulation models for suicide prevention planning, and data analysis and modelling for youth mental health services.
My work on suicide prevention uses simulation to compare combinations of interventions before they are funded. A 2018 paper in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry argues that static measures of impact are not adequate for planning, because the effects of interventions on suicide change over time. The models that followed showed that the effect of reducing psychiatric beds on suicide depends on a threshold that stronger community services can shift (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2019), and that the best-performing combination of interventions stayed the same across four different COVID-19 pandemic scenarios (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022). A model-based analysis found that expanding mental health service capacity past a critical level can move a system from persistent unmet need to full treatment coverage (International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 2023).
At the Brain and Mind Centre I worked with the youth mental health research team on how young people's clinical, social and functional outcomes develop over time. This includes a dynamic Bayesian network analysis of the dependencies between social, emotional and physical health factors (Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 2023), dynamic learning of individual suicidal ideation trajectories (npj Mental Health Research, 2024), and a computational model of how sleep-wake behaviour affects the onset of mania (European Psychiatry, 2026).
Other work in this strand concerns service design and the social determinants of mental health. The Best Care, First Time report for the Bupa Health Foundation (2021), two papers in Frontiers in Health Services (2021) and a local system dynamics model (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2021) examine how digital technology can coordinate care between youth mental health services. The Bulletin of the World Health Organization paper (2024) examines how economic policies shape the social environments that affect mental health.
Youth mental health and suicide prevention
Argues that population mental health will not improve while policy focuses on treating individuals and ignores the economic conditions that generate psychological distress. Insecure work, financial strain and social disconnection follow from economic policy choices, making economic policy a key lever for reform.
Every work in this strand, newest first.