
Siobhan O ' NeillUniversity of Ulster
Siobhan O ' Neill
MPsychSc PhD
About
168
Publications
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Introduction
Professor of Mental Health Sciences.
Member of the World Mental Health Survey Initiative.
Current projects: epidemiology of mental health and suicide in Northern Ireland. Ulster University Student Wellbeing Study.
www.profsiobhanoneill.com
Additional affiliations
January 2002 - December 2011
Publications
Publications (168)
BACKGROUND
There is potential for digital mental health interventions to provide affordable, efficient, and scalable support to individuals. Digital interventions, including CBT, stress-management, and mindfulness programs, have shown promise when applied in workplace settings.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to conduct an umbrella review of sy...
Background
There is potential for digital mental health interventions to provide affordable, efficient, and scalable support to individuals. Digital interventions, including cognitive behavioral therapy, stress management, and mindfulness programs, have shown promise when applied in workplace settings.
Objective
The aim of this study is to conduct...
Abstract
Introduction Despite the evidence supporting the value of digital supports for enhancing youth mental health services, there is a lack of guidance on how best to engage with young people in coproduction processes during the design and evaluation of these technologies. User input is crucial in digital mental health, especially for disadvant...
Background
National suicide prevention strategies are general population-based approaches to prevent suicide by promoting help-seeking behaviors and implementing interventions. Crisis helplines are one of the suicide prevention resources available for public use, where individuals experiencing a crisis can talk to a trained volunteer. Samaritans UK...
Background
Text-based digital media platforms have revolutionized communication and information sharing, providing valuable access to knowledge and understanding in the fields of mental health and suicide prevention.
Objective
This systematic review aimed to determine how machine learning and data analysis can be applied to text-based digital medi...
Student mental health was a growing concern globally prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of the pandemic and associated restrictions on the psychological wellbeing of college students. Baseline data were collected pre-pandemic in September 2019 among students attending a university in Northern...
This paper makes a case for digital mental health and provides insights into how digital technologies can enhance (but not replace) existing mental health services. We describe digital mental health by presenting a suite of digital technologies (from digital interventions to the application of artificial intelligence). We discuss the benefits of di...
Background
Elevated levels of suicidality, ADHD, mental ill-health and substance disorders are reported among college students globally, yet few receive treatment. Some faculties and courses appear to have more at-risk students than others. The current study aimed to determine if students commencing college in different academic disciplines were at...
Background:
In recent years, advances in technology have led to an influx of mental health apps, in particular the development of mental health and well-being chatbots, which have already shown promise in terms of their efficacy, availability, and accessibility. The ChatPal chatbot was developed to promote positive mental well-being among citizens...
Background
Awareness of adverse childhood experiences and their impact on adult psychopathology primarily focuses on adversities within the home. There is limited insight into the impact of adversities across peer environments.
Objective
This study investigates 19 items related to adverse experiences across the home, school and peer environments a...
Patient‐reported helpfulness of treatment is an important indicator of quality in patient‐centered care. We examined its pathways and predictors among respondents to household surveys who reported ever receiving treatment for major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, specific phobia, post‐traumatic stress disorder, bipolar diso...
This study aims to explore how machine learning classification accuracy changes with different demographic groups. The HappyDB is a dataset that contains over 100,000 happy statements, incorporating demographic information that includes marital status, gender, age, and parenthood status. Using the happiness category field, we test different types o...
Purpose:
To investigate the prevalence and predictors of perceived helpfulness of treatment in persons with a history of DSM-IV social anxiety disorder (SAD), using a worldwide population-based sample.
Methods:
The World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys is a coordinated series of community epidemiological surveys of non-institutio...
Objective
To evaluate the prevalence of suicidal ideation (SI), plans and attempts, and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) among students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Furthermore, we explored the mediating effects of depression, anxiety, alcohol and substance use on the association between ADHD and suicidal behaviors and NSSI....
Digital technologies such as chatbots can be used in the field of mental health. In particular, chatbots can be used to support citizens living in sparsely populated areas who face problems such as poor access to mental health services, lack of 24/7 support, barriers to engagement, lack of age appropriate support and reductions in health budgets. T...
Background
Many students struggle with psychological problems during their college years. These problems may be even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic with the accompanying restrictions and transition to an online learning environment, but few longitudinal studies have been conducted to date. The aim of this study was to compare symptoms o...
The increase in psychological disorders and suicidal behaviour in students is a reason for growing concern. Some may start university with pre-existing problems, while others develop problems during this time. It is important to evaluate mental health and wellbeing early, identifying those at risk. The aim of this study was to compare mental health...
PurposeTo investigate the associations of childhood adversities (CAs) with lifetime onset and transitions across suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) among incoming college students.Methods
Web-based self-report surveys administered to 20,842 incoming college students from nine countries (response rate 45.6%) assessed lifetime suicidal ideation, p...
A growing body of evidence supports an important role for alterations in the brain-gut-microbiome axis in the aetiology of depression and other psychiatric disorders. The potential role of the oral microbiome in mental health has received little attention, even though it is one of the most diverse microbiomes in the body and oral dysbiosis has been...
The objective of this study was to understand the attitudes of professionals who work in mental health regarding the use of conversational user interfaces, or chatbots, to support people’s mental health and wellbeing. This study involves an online survey to measure the awareness and attitudes of mental healthcare professionals and experts. The find...
Background
Although non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is an issue of major concern to colleges worldwide, we lack detailed information about the epidemiology of NSSI among college students. The objectives of this study were to present the first cross-national data on the prevalence of NSSI and NSSI disorder among first-year college students and its a...
Recently, there has been activity at public locations where people have died by suicide, including the erection of suicide prevention messages and memorials (decorations). This research looks at the impact of these decorations and associated media coverage of the decorations on suicidal behaviour at bridges. Incidents (n = 160) of suicidal behaviou...
The objective of this study is to identify the most common reasons for contacting a crisis helpline through analysing a large call log data set. Two taxonomies were identified within the call log data from a Northern Ireland telephone crisis helpline (Lifeline), categorising the cited reason for each call. One taxonomy categorised the reasons at a...
Background
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 to be an international pandemic in March 2020. While numbers of new confirmed cases of the disease and death tolls are rising at an alarming rate on a daily basis, there is concern that the pandemic and the measures taken to counteract it could cause an increase in distress...
BACKGROUND
The World Health Organisation declared an outbreak of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to be an international pandemic in March 2020. While new confirmed cases of the disease and death tolls rise at an alarming rate on a daily basis, there is concern that the pandemic and counteracting measures could cause an increase in distress a...
Background:
Currently the leading cause of global disability, clinical depression is a heterogeneous condition characterised by low mood, anhedonia and cognitive impairments. Its growing incidence among young people, often co-occurring with self-harm, is of particular concern. We recently reported very high rates of depression among first year uni...
Background
Childhood adversities and maladaptive parenting practices, such as parental over-control, over-protection or over-indulgence can be significant risk factors for psychopathology and suicidal behaviour. Adaptive emotion regulation strategies can be protective. However, individuals may develop maladaptive emotion regulation strategies as a...
Importance
The perceived helpfulness of treatment is an important patient-centered measure that is a joint function of whether treatment professionals are perceived as helpful and whether patients persist in help-seeking after previous unhelpful treatments.
Objective
To examine the prevalence and factors associated with the 2 main components of pe...
Background
There is a substantial proportion of patients who drop out of treatment before they receive minimally adequate care. They tend to have worse health outcomes than those who complete treatment. Our main goal is to describe the frequency and determinants of dropout from treatment for mental disorders in low-, middle-, and high-income countr...
This work presents an analysis of 3.5 million calls made to a mental health and well-being helpline, seeking to answer the question, what different groups of callers can be characterised by specific usage patterns? Calls were extracted from a telephony informatics system. Each call was logged with a date, time, duration and a unique identifier allo...
Clustering analysis, or clustering, is an activity which can be applied to user event log data to determine the types of users which exist within a service, and can be used to gain insights into the client base by their behaviour. However, when applied to longitudinal user event log data, clustering can potentially misclassify regular users as ’one...
Behavioural data analytics and user log analysis can be useful to gain insight into how users interact with technologies. In this study, data analytics were conducted on maternal mental health data generated from the Moment Health app to address the question: What is the temporal behaviour of users when completing ecological momentary assessments (...
Smartphone-based digital phenotyping can provide insight into mood, cognition and behaviour. In this study, data analytics was carried out with data generated from a maternal mental health app to address the following question: what is the temporal behaviour of users when completing ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) with EMAs in the form of m...
Early life experiences, such as childhood adversities or poor parenting practices, can impact on the ability to cope with stressors across the lifespan. Furthermore, poor coping skills can lead to the development of mental illnesses, self‐harm, and suicidal behavior. This study aimed to examine demographic differences in stress levels and to determ...
The aim of this paper is to assess the usability of a chatbot for mental health care within a social enterprise. Chatbots are becoming more prevalent in our daily lives, as we can now use them to book flights, manage savings, and check the weather. Chatbots are increasingly being used in mental health care, with the emergence of “virtual therapists...
Background:
College students have high prevalence of mental disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and low rates of treatment uptake. This study assesses treatment access, intentions to seek help, and perceived barriers to help-seeking, considering gender and suicidal thoughts or behaviours (STBs) as predictors.
Methods:
Data is from th...
Background
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, version 5 (DSM‐5) definition of agoraphobia (AG) as an independent diagnostic entity makes it timely to re‐examine the epidemiology of AG. Study objective was to present representative data on the characteristics of individuals who meet DSM‐IV criteria for AG (AG without a histor...
The paper presents a frequency domain analysis of call data records of a telephone helpline for those seeking mental health and wellbeing support and for those who are in a suicidal crisis. A call data record dataset provided by Samaritans Ireland helpline is used. Fourier series is used to ascertain periodicity in the call volume. The main finding...
Cambridge Core - Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology - Primary Care Mental Health - edited by Linda Gask
Femtech (female technology) describes digital technologies focusing on women’s health, which is gaining enormous growing global attention and investment. One such women’s health area is maternal mental health, which is an increasing problem with a lack of accessible resources. The overall aim of this research programme is to provide evidence to inf...
Objective
Despite their widespread use, there is limited evidence on whether crisis lines are effective, how to identify callers at risk or the best ways of supporting callers to prevent suicide. This study compared the features of callers and call patterns in service users who had died by suicide with those who were currently alive from 2008 to 20...
Background:
Adverse childhood events can have a very negative impact on psychopathology. Those with good social support networks may benefit from these relationships, with social networks protecting a person against the negative effect of childhood adversities. However, individuals who suffer early adversity may have lower levels of social network...
Background:
Prevalence estimates of suicidal behaviour in the college student population are consistently higher than rates for the general adult population. This study examines mental health disorders and childhood adversities as predictors of self-harm and suicidal behaviours.
Methods:
The Ulster University Student Wellbeing study commenced in...
Background
Research suggests that childhood adversities are key etiological factors in the onset and persistence of many psychological disorders. Intra-familial adversities in particular have been found to increase the propensity to develop PTSD.
Objective
The main aims of this study were to examine the prevalence of childhood adversities in North...
Purpose:
The primary aims are to (1) obtain representative prevalence estimates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) among college students worldwide and (2) investigate whether STB is related to matriculation to and attrition from college.
Methods:
Data from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys were analyzed, which include face-to-face inter...
Childhood adversities are key etiological factors in the onset and persistence of psychopathology. In Northern Ireland the Troubles also impacted on the population's psychological health. This study used data from the Northern Ireland Study of Health and Stress a collaborative epidemiological study which used the WMH-CIDI to assess mental health di...
Objective: College entrance may be a strategically well-placed “point of capture” for detecting late adolescents with suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB). However, a clear epidemiological picture of STB among incoming college students is lacking. We present the first cross-national data on prevalence as well as socio-demographic and college-relat...
Background:
This paper presents an analysis of call data records pertaining to a telephone helpline in Ireland among individuals seeking mental health and well-being support and among those who are in a suicidal crisis.
Objective:
The objective of our study was to examine whether rule sets generated from decision tree classification, trained usi...
Mental health and behavioural problems are common among students commencing university. University life can be stressful and problems often exacerbate during their course of study, while others develop disorders for the first time. The WHO World Mental Health Surveys International College Student Project aims to conduct longitudinal research to exa...
Northern Ireland is an appropriate region to examine the impact of traumatic experiences, owing to the many years of civil violence that have characterized its recent history, known colloquially as the “Troubles.” Given the prominence of traumatic experiences among the aging population of Northern Ireland (NI), an evidence base is required to infor...
Background
Deaths from suicide, as recorded within the Northern Ireland Coroner's Office for the years 2005–2011 inclusive, were analysed in terms of standardised mortality ratios (SMRs), within Wards and Local Government Districts (LGDs). The aim of the study is to examine factors relating to the ecological context of the area within which the per...
Perspective:
Prior DSM-IV mental disorders are positively associated with subsequent back/neck pain onset, with a clear dose-response relationship between number of mental disorders and subsequent pain. Earlier-onset mental disorders are stronger predictors of subsequent pain onset, compared to lateronset disorders.
Background:
Child health research in clinical practice is increasing throughout the UK. Nurses and midwives facilitate access to patients, enact research study protocols and have a critical role in parental decisions to enrol children into research studies. Little is known about their perception of this process.
Aims & objectives:
To explore the...
Background
Research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) course finds a substantial proportion of cases remit within 6 months, a majority within 2 years, and a substantial minority persists for many years. Results are inconsistent about pre-trauma predictors.
Methods
The WHO World Mental Health surveys assessed lifetime DSM-IV PTSD presence-co...
Background
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which focuses on psychological flexibility and behavior change. ACT has been advocated for the treatment of Persistent Pain. A systematic review concluded that ACT is efficacious for enhancing physical functioning and decreasing distress amongst adu...
Mental disorders among college students in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys – CORRIGENDUM - R. P. Auerbach, J. Alonso, W. G. Axinn, P. Cuijpers, D. D. Ebert, J. G. Green, I. Hwang, R. C. Kessler, H. Liu, P. Mortier, M. K. Nock, S. Pinder-Amaker, N. A. Sampson, S. Aguilar-Gaxiola, A. Al-Hamzawi, L. H. Andrade, C. Benjet, J....
Life events and circumstances leading to death change throughout the life course. In this study, 4 age groups within those who have died by suicide are compared in terms method of suicide, sex, occupation, mental disorders, prior suicide attempts, and life events prior to death. Analyses were based on a database of deaths by suicide and undetermine...
Objectives:
To understand medication use prior to suicide in relation to patterns, polypharmacy and adherence.
Methods:
1,371 suicide cases were coded and latent class analysis used to identify combinations of medications prescribed prior to death.
Results:
Two thirds had been prescribed medication with 30.7% prescribed three or more. Latent c...
Importance:
Previous research has documented significant variation in the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) depending on the type of traumatic experience (TE) and history of TE exposure, but the relatively small sample sizes in these studies resulted in a number of unresolved basic questions.
Objective:
To examine disaggregated...
Background:
Unexpected death of a loved one (UD) is the most commonly reported traumatic experience in cross-national surveys. However, much remains to be learned about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after this experience. The WHO World Mental Health (WMH) survey initiative provides a unique opportunity to address these issues.
Methods:
Da...
We previously reported on the cross-national epidemiology of ADHD from the first 10 countries in the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys. The current report expands those previous findings to the 20 nationally or regionally representative WMH surveys that have now collected data on adult ADHD. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CID...
Purpose
Days out of role due to health problems are a major source of lost human capital. We examined the relative importance of common physical and mental disorders in accounting for days out of role in Northern Ireland using the Northern Ireland Study of Health and Stress (NISHS) WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Survey.
Methods
Face-to-face intervie...
Context:
The scarcity of cross-national reports and the changes in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version 5 (DSM-5) regarding panic disorder (PD) and panic attacks (PAs) call for new epidemiological data on PD and PAs and its subtypes in the general population.
Objective:
To present representative data about the cross-national epidemiology of...
Background. Although mental disorders are significant predictors of educational attainment throughout the entire educational career, most research on mental disorders among students has focused on the primary and secondary school years.
Methods. The World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys were used to examine the associations of ment...
Background:
Over 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland (NI) has impacted on the population's mental health. However, childhood adversities may add to the psychological impact of conflict. The aims of the study were to assess co-occurrence across childhood adversities, conflict related traumas, and psychological health, then explore demographic...