A new approach to preventing and treating anxiety and depression may be used to improve the emotional health of fly-in fly-out workers and people living in bushfire-prone areas.

Natasha Dean
Senior Clinical Psychologist, Victorian Paediatric Rehabilitation Service, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne Victoria
MPsych (Clinical) UWA; BA (Honours in Psychology) University of Tasmania; BA (Double Major in Psychology & Criminology) University of Melbourne

As a Senior Clinical Psychologist in Paediatric Rehabilitation, I’m involved in the provision of assessment and treatment of children with acquired brain injuries and musculoskeletal conditions.

Dr Mark Wood’s hands-on puzzles have been the biggest sellers in a couple of Australia’s leading department store toy sections for the past five years and have won numerous awards here, in the US and the UK.

However, they are more than just a stimulating way to spend a Sunday afternoon; they’re helping create new research opportunities.

Dr Wood, who has a background in psychology and education, creates the puzzles with his research partner Frank Dyksterhuis, a mathematician and physicist.

As well as entertaining people, they can also open children’s and adults’ minds to logical and deductive thinking, enhance problem-solving strategies and encourage creativity.

Almost a quarter of Australian children and adolescents are now classed as either overweight or obese. That poses a serious public health concern, especially since childhood weight problems often continue into adulthood, increasing the risk of heart disease, Type II diabetes, asthma and orthopaedic problems. Research conducted at UWA estimates that up to 80 per cent of children with weight problems have mothers who are either overweight or obese. UWA researchers are now trying to tackle the obesity epidemic from a new angle – by targeting treatment at overweight mothers of overweight children.