Professor Siobhan O'Neill

Overview

Siobhan O’Neill is a Professor of Mental Health Sciences at Ulster University. Her current research programmes focus on trauma and suicidal behaviour in Northern Ireland (NI) and novel interventions for mental health and suicidal behaviour. Siobhan has expertise in qualitative and quantitative (epidemiology and survey) research methods.

Prior to joining Ulster University in 2000, she completed a degree in psychology at the Queen's University of Belfast and a masters in health psychology at NUI Galway. She also worked as a Public Health Researcher, conducting evaluations of health services and users’ experience of care.

Between 2005 and 2008 Siobhan coordinated the largest ever study of mental health in Northern Ireland, the NI Research and Development Office funded, NI Study of Health and Stress. This study revealed the high proportions of the NI population who had unmet mental health needs and the extent of mental health disorders associated with the NI conflict.

She is also a coordinator of the NI suicide study, a study of the characteristics of completed suicides and undetermined deaths. She is responsible for the dissemination of the research findings on trauma and suicide to policy makers and stakeholders in NI.

Siobhan is a member of the World Mental Health Survey Consortium, a Director of the Irish Association of Suicidology and Youthlife, and an advisor to several organisations who provide services and interventions for mental health and suicide prevention and sits on several national and international research committees.

She has over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including several ground breaking studies of mental health and suicidal behaviour in Northern Ireland. She is part of the World Mental Health Gender and Mental-Physical Comorbidity workgroups and led the world mental health paper linking mental illness with the subsequent development of cancer.

For further information see her research gate profile.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8786-2118