Leading youth mental health organisation Orygen is preparing to start a new program, which will work with international students to build a digital program to bring down disproportionately high rates of suicide and self-harm among that cohort.
Orygen Youth Health is a mental health service for young people aged 15 – 25 in the western and north-western metropolitan region, which specialises in youth mental health research, education, advocacy and policy organisation.
Program lead researcher, Dr Sam McKay, leads the international student suicide prevention research programs on a number of things, the latest being this new program.
“We know that international students report more suicide attempts than domestic students even if they have similar amounts of thoughts to domestic students,” he said.
“And we also did another piece of research that showed there’s no evidence based suicide prevention programs available for international students.
“So this is like a major gap in available prevention programs. And that’s particularly concerning given the risk of suicide attempts.”
Dr McKay said with three separate grants, Orygen will create a new suicide prevention, digital programs specifically co created with and for international students.
A $75,000 grant from the Study Melbourne Inclusion Program will continue, Suicide Prevention Australia has donated $99,000 and the University of Melbourne provided Orygen an early career researcher grant for $38,000.
“There’s a little over $200,000 to do the work, which is pretty exciting,” Dr McKay said.
“The aim is to start the co-creation process this year with our program and have a working prototype by the end of this year with testing to happen in the first part of next year.”
International students living in Maribyrnong or Hobsons Bay, they will have the chance to be a part of the program and get paid while doing it.
“We will be spending a lot of time with international students and people from the sector to create something that’s adapted to their needs, that makes sense and is approachable,” he said.
“We’re going to be looking for a lot of international students, so if they’re living in that area that can be great for them to join the program, work with us and get paid for it.”
Dr McKay is happy to be contacted through the Orygen line for those interested.
Details: 9966 9100
Jennifer Pittorino
