Sarah Wayland

University of New England | UNE · Department of Social Work

Systematic collection of outcome measures within suicide bereavement support is vital in building the sector’s evidence base. However, there is currently limited understanding around the appropriate and sensitive use of outcome measures. Following the scoping review methodology, a literature review was undertaken to map how programs and interventio...

Objectives: Identify interventions offered for children bereaved by parental suicide, investigate reported effectiveness and explore the acceptability of identified interventions. Method: Six electronic databases were systematically searched for primary studies investigating intervention effectiveness and acceptability, (August 2011 to June 2023...

I am now seeking eligible participants to take part in an online interview to provide insights about their experiences after suicide loss or attempt(s) of a parent/ caregiver(s) during childhood for my research project: Research project: Exploring offspring support experiences following childhood exposure to parental suicide (loss or attempt) If yo...

Supervision is a critical component of practice for mental health clinicians and healthcare workers. With a lack of understanding regarding supervision in Peer Work practice, there is a clear need for frameworks and models to be adapted into this space. This scoping review will reflect the evidence base of clinical supervision relevant to Peer Work...

Traditional qualitative inquiry research methods exhort us to look for the ‘good’ story tellers who use metaphors to describe their experiences, emotions, and events. This privileges abled-bodied individuals, meaning that without full individual accessibility for people with disability is not achieved. The objective of this paper is to present a ca...

Background The involvement of people with lived experience (LEX) workers in the development, design, and delivery of integrated health services seeks to improve service user engagement and health outcomes and reduce healthcare gaps. Yet, LEX workers report feeling undervalued and having limited influence on service delivery. There is a need for sys...

Adults, of all ages (18+ yrs), are invited to participate in this phase of my ongoing research project. This research investigates lived experience of childhood exposure to parental/ caregiver suicide loss and/or childhood experience of parental/ caregiver suicide attempt(s). If you have childhood experience of such loss or suicide attempt by a pa...

Objective: The goal of this scoping review is to map the various methods used to understand the experiences and outcomes of individuals receiving bereavement support after a sudden, traumatic death. Furthermore, the review aims to determine whether and how these outcome and experience measurements are utilised to inform service delivery. Introduc...

Objective. Mental ill-health is a common occurrence globally and represents a significant burden of disease. In Australia, the development and improvement of programs that connect individuals earlier in their mental ill-health journey is a national health priority. However, there are current informational gaps on community-based initiatives and the...

The project aims to develop understanding of the appropriate and sensitive use of outcome measures, and the subsequent meaningful use of outcome data, within the suicide postvention sector. The findings from the research will inform the suicide postvention sector broadly on appropriate approaches to understanding the outcomes of people who access s...

Background Suicide is more prevalent among disadvantaged, discriminated, and marginalised people with the majority of global suicide deaths occurring in the low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This can be attributed to sociocultural contexts and exacerbated by access to limited resources and services that can assist with early identification,...

This research is focused on those with experience of parental/ caregiver loss to suicide during their childhood, and who are currently aged 18-30 years

Shared responsibility: conceptualising how a public health Shared responsibility: conceptualising how a public health approach may enhance police response to missing persons approach may enhance police response to missing persons Twitter @sarahlwayland 26 Gambier-Ross et al.: Shared responsibility: conceptualising how a public health approach may e...

For many, suicide bereavement is challenging. Postvention responses are few and evidence to inform them is lacking. Eighteen postvention experts completed an online survey regarding the key issues, challenges, and supports available to people bereaved by suicide. Participants were asked to identify the issues, then rank them in terms of importance...

Plain english summary Organisations and researchers need to collaborate to produce new knowledge of health interventions. The literature identifies that there is a substantial evidence gap between producing knowledge and improving health outcomes. Here we reflect, via a case study methodology, on ways to co-create new knowledge by following a four-...

Background In Australia, the collaborative involvement of stakeholders, especially those with lived experience in mental health and suicide prevention, has become important to government policy and practice at Federal and State levels. However, little is known about how governments translate this intention into frameworks of co-creation for policy,...

INTRODUCTION: When working in the fields of loss, grief, bereavement and dying, the lived experience of the social work students, and their developing practice in the field, can be enhanced by awareness of the concept of the wounded healer. METHODS: This study sought to explore the wounded healer concept amongst Australian social work students who...

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When a person is reported missing there are substantial costs for the individual, their family and society. This paper conceptualises the experience of missing persons episodes, through a public health approach. This then allows police, stakeholders and the community to engage in discussions about who is vulnerable to going missing by intervening i...

Brief contact interventions are an efficient and cost-effective way of providing support to individuals. Whether they are an effective bereavement intervention is not clear. This systematic review included articles from 2014 to 2021.711 studies were identified, with 15 meeting inclusion criteria. The brief contact interventions included information...

About a year ago, many of us were in lockdown. State premiers fronted the media every day to reveal how many people had tested positive for COVID and how many people had died. The number of deaths were prominent in news bulletins. We would lament the sadness of it all, until the next day’s data arrived. A year later, Australia has an average of a...

Help seekers regularly present to Emergency Departments (EDs) when in suicidal crisis for intervention to ensure their immediate safety, which may assist in reducing future attempts. The emergency health workforce have unique insights that can inform suicide prevention efforts during this critical junction in an individual's experience with suicide...

Psychoeducational groups have been used to address many health needs. Yet, there are few such options available for people who have attempted suicide. This study presents preliminary findings from an open trial of Eclipse, an 8-week closed, psych-oeducational group for people who have attempted suicide. It examined the effectiveness of the Eclipse...

Qualitative research necessitates the representation of, and engagement with, people who the research is designed to assist. Disability research not only seeks to explore populations where lived experience of disability is distinct, it is also a field where researchers themselves have lived experience. This paper reflects on the methodological inno...

Background Governments and third-sector organizations (TSOs) require support to reduce suicide mortality through funding of suicide prevention services and innovative research. One way is for researchers to engage individuals and services in multisectoral collaborations, to collaboratively design, develop and test suicide prevention services and pr...

The trauma of having a family member missing is commonly described as an ambiguous loss where the finality of the loss is not realized, as is experienced with a death. There is uncertainty due to the trauma of the absence and subsequent police investigation, leading to physical and emotional impacts for the aftercare of those left behind. There are...

Background In 2020, Australia, like most countries, introduced restrictions related to the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Frontline services in the domestic and family violence (DFV) sector had to adapt and innovate to continue supporting clients who were experiencing and/or at risk of DFV. There is a need to understand fro...

Research protocol for systematic literature review of quantitative and qualitative research evidence of the effectiveness and acceptability of interventions offered to populations that include people bereaved by parental loss to suicide in childhood.

Background: Family members often provide informal care following a suicide attempt. Carers may be vulnerable to caregiver burden. Yet, little is known about what contributes to this. Aims: To determine the predictors of caregiver burden in those carers who support people who have attempted suicide. Method: An online survey of 435 participants asses...

Employees of forensic medical service organizations are exposed to occupational trauma during their clinical, pathology, scientific and corporate duties. Adverse impacts, associated with occupational trauma exposure, can illicit negative outcomes that may influence a person’s professional practice as well as their physical, behavioural and psycholo...

Preterm birth (birth <37 completed weeks’ gestation) is common, affecting 10.6% of live births globally (nearly 15 million babies per year). Having a new baby admitted to a neonatal unit often triggers stress and anxiety for parents. This paper seeks to explore experiences of preterm birth via Twitter. The intermingling of COVID-19 restrictions and...

During the pandemic, lots of us, myself included, are struggling to live in the "now". That "now", with all its uncertainty, doesn't look like the life we used to live or the life we imagine we will return to. That experience has a name-liminality. Understanding liminality and its origins can provide ways to better understand the foggy, ambiguous s...

Despite high rates of critical incidents (CIs) in working class occupations, there is a significant gap in our understanding of responses to these events. In this study, we aimed to inform a response training module by synthesising the key elements of pre-, during- and post-incident responses to CIs and suicide in the workplace. A rapid review iden...

In the UK, tweets around COVID-19 and health care have primarily focused on the NHS. Recent research has identified that the psychological well-being of NHS staff has been adversely impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate narratives relating to the NHS and COVID-19 during the first lockdown (26 March–...

Media as a public health messaging tool can shape community perception. In missing persons’ investigations Police utilise media to assist in location and recovery of absent people. This study, of Australian media in 2019, revealed that the statistical evidence of who goes missing, and returns, revealed that is not replicated in news articles. Conte...

There is currently limited information about the impact and experiences of asuicide attempt on the well-being of a perso n providing care before, during, or after the attempt.Scant evidence available suggests that providing care has a profound impact on the supportperson or carers’ own physical and psychological health; they may experience adverse...

People living with disability may face significant barriers in work, study, sport and joining in everyday activities. Community attitudes and experiences of discrimination can further impact on a person’s wellbeing, with the resultant ableism leading to perceptions of the disabled as weak and needy, and experiences of rejection and oppression. Alli...

Background: Exposure to parental death in childhood has been associated with increased suicide risk among offspring, although few studies have examined protective factors that reduce suicide risk in this cohort. This systematic literature review aimed to synthesise primary studies on the protective factors that reduce suicidality following childhoo...

This article examines findings from a qualitative study exploring the experiences of young adults with disabilities regarding their perceptions of interpersonal discrimination on public transport in two Australian states. Interpersonal discrimination by members of the public included contests for accessible seating, receiving unwanted physical assi...

Workplace exposure to suicide attempts and deaths has been widely recognized as an occupational hazard for mental health and social care workers, including mental health nurses. Research consistently demonstrates the adverse impact on professionals. This paper explores the results of an online survey examining suicide exposure and impact. Of the 30...

Nearly all missing persons (97%) return within two weeks, which causes these cases to be seen, by both the public and police, as simple search operations. Viewing missing persons in this way ignores the underlying issues that trigger disappearances, making prevention strategies more difficult to put in place. As we mark National Missing Persons We...

The transition from lived experience to social work researcher or teacher is well known and, in many ways, an expected pathway. What is less documented is the lived experience that happens to the social work researcher or teacher, the moment the researcher becomes the research topic, or the teacher becomes the lesson. In writing these reflections w...

People with a lived experience of suicide are commonly included within suicide prevention research. This includes participation in conferences, policy development, research and other activities. Yet little is known about the impact on the person in the long term of regularly sharing one's experience to different audiences and, in some cases, to a s...

A report prepared for the National Suicide Prevention Advisor and National Suicide Prevention Taskforce

2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of the 1999 landmark publication Ambiguous loss: learning to live with unresolved grief by Emeritus Professor Pauline Boss. The book, and its exploration of uncertainty, has invited ambiguous loss into the grief counselling space, as a way to provide specialised care for families and friends of missing people. T...

Co-creation of new knowledge has the potential to speed up the discovery and application of new knowledge into practice. However, the progress of co-creation is hindered by a lack of definitional clarity and inconsistent use of terminology. The aim of this paper is to propose a new standardised definition of co-creation of new knowledge for health...

(1) Background: First-hand accounts of lived experience of suicide remain rare in the research literature. Increasing interest in the lived experience of suicide is resulting in more opportunities for people to participate in research based on their personal experience. How individuals choose to participate in research, and their experience of doin...

Background: A research protocol is presented for the evaluation of the Eclipse group, an 8-week closed group for people who have previously attempted suicide, which aims to reduce future suicide and increase resilience and support identification and help seeking.

With funding from both the Grenet Merrin and Ian Potter Foundations, and support from academics based at the University of New England, SANE Australia is pleased to present its findings in the first phase of the Better Support project. This two-phased project explores the needs of families and friends supporting those who have attempted suicide.

Introduction The rising rate of incarceration in Australia, driven by high reoffending, is a major public health problem. Problematic drug use is associated with increasing rates of reoffending and return to custody of individuals. Throughcare provides support to individuals during imprisonment through to post-release, improving both the transition...

Objective: To describe the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of Aboriginal mothers in prison. Methods: Cross‐sectional survey, including a Short Form Health Survey (SF‐12) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (5‐item version) administered to Aboriginal women who self‐identified as mothers. Results: Seventy‐seven Aboriginal mothers in New...

Children and young people in rural Australia experience disadvantage compared with metropolitan counterparts, with low educational attainment and disengagement from schooling being linked to poorer health outcomes. Schools are an existing contact point between individuals and health services. However, these health services are often overburdened an...

Understanding the needs of children and young people with disability, and the likelihood of abuse they experience, is not a trivial problem. In Australia, there is now hard evidence that children and young people with disability are three times more likely to be maltreated than their non-disabled peers.

Through a mixed methods research design the study sought to explore: • What might be the best practice guidelines for providing crisis and ongoing counselling to families of missing people? • What advancements have there been in the counselling field that may be relevant to families and friends of missing people in Australia? • How can information...

Exposure to suicide and the associated impacts for those left behind can be long lasting and traumatic. Literature has predominantly examined the experience of suicide and impact from the perspective of those closest to the deceased—with studies primarily focused on kin relationships. Appropriate and timely support delivered by skilled professional...

Suicide prevention remains a priority in Australia and internationally. The rate of suicide in Australia is at a 10-year high with 3128 people dying by intentional self-harm in 2017, a preliminary death rate of 12.6 per 100,000. This represents approximately 8.6 deaths per day. Suicide is particularly high among certain groups, notably young people...

Background: The aim of this study was to better understand early-stage mental health recovery experiences of people living with severe and persistent mental illness and complex needs. Methods: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 people engaged in an Australian program specifically designed for people facing complex barrie...

Background: The paper presents a systematic review and metasynthesis of findings from qualitative evaluations of community reentry programs. The programs sought to engage recently released adult prison inmates with either problematic drug use or a mental health disorder. Methods: Seven biomedical and social science databases, Cinahl, Pubmed, Sco...

See: http://www.sbs.com.au/topics/life/culture/article/2017/08/03/welcome-home-heres-why-we-need-hear-missing-persons-who-return

Recovery conversations provide space for consumers of mental health services to identify how life, post diagnosis, might be lived. Anthony (1993) notes that 'recovery is a simple but powerful vision' (p.13) however there is no universally accepted definition of recovery in a context of mental health. Conceptualising recovery as an individual journe...

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recognised early on the likely particular vulnerabilities of children with disability and the institutional contexts which they encounter. This commissioned discussion paper provides a reasoned analysis of the historical, social and policy context surrounding children with disa...

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the film version of Joan Lindsay's book Picnic at Hanging Rock. First published in 1967, the book is an Australian-based story set in 1900, in which four students and a teacher from a private girls’ school go missing after climbing Hanging Rock. The narrative of the book plays with the danger of the Australi...

When a person goes missing, those left behind mourn an ambiguous loss where grief can be disenfranchised. Different to bereavement following death, hope figures into this experience as a missing person has the potential to return. This review explores hope for families of missing people. Lived experience of ambiguous loss was deconstructed to revea...

When a person is missing the relationship for those left behind with those tasked to investigate the disappearance is significant. Families interviewed for the purposes of an Australian based narrative inquiry study exploring hope and ambiguous loss referred to the Police as both “hope enablers” and “hope detractors” in their response to loss. Ther...

More than 35000 Australians are reported missed each year. National data identifies that the incidence of people going missing, and of those who remain missing long-term (more than six months), are increasing. When a person is missing, the impact on the emotional wellbeing of those left behind is profound. There is a dearth of international researc...

When a sibling goes missing the experience of loss can be complex and unrelenting. The unresolved grief can complicate the bereavement journey. Within the limited literature examining the experience of those grieving this type of loss most focus on parents' experience of missing children. The voice of siblings has been little heard. The current stu...

Each year in Australia 35,000 people are reported missing to law enforcement agencies (James, Anderson, and Putt, 2008). When a person is missing those who are left behind exist in a space between the person being both here and gone (Boss, 1999). Within this space, a sense of ambiguous loss is punctuated by feelings of hope. Given the lack of certa...

Media stories about missing people are as intriguing as they are common. As a community, we form our own opinions of the person who is absent by the details that the media shares with the public. But often these very same details used to find a missing person are in direct conflict with the person's privacy rights while they are away and when they...

Each year in Australia, 35,000 people are reported missing to police1. That’s one person every 15 minutes. For every missing person’s case reported, at least 12 people are affected whether it is emotionally, psychologically, physically or financially. That means that a significantly large number of people will endure the trauma associated with the...