Eileen Harkess-Murphy

Understanding and improving health and wellbeing for children, families and communities is my primary area of interest.  My background is in psychology and research, where I have worked with children and families in a variety of contexts over the past 15 years; working with adolescents in an intensive innovative education context to boost achievement and working in a social work environment with vulnerable families in crisis, undertaking assessment, coordinating multi-disciplinary support and interventions.  More recently, I worked on and have written bids for several large-scale European projects within the field of healthcare, including, social norms in alcohol and drugs and family health practice and education. 

I have expertise in research having worked for a private psychologist for approximately 10 years.  My research expertise is in self-harm and suicide behaviours, where I undertook a large-scale mixed methods study of children and adolescents across 6 local-authority regions within West Central Scotland investigating suicide behaviours, self-harm rates and psychosocial risk characteristics. 

I recently worked for Healthcare Improvement Scotland as a researcher for the Scottish Medicines Consortium, where I further developed expertise in medical statistics and methodologies in clinical trials.  I was part of a skilled multi-disciplinary team undertaking critical appraisal of new medicines, providing robust evidence-based recommendations to NHSScotland on the benefits and cost-effectiveness of medicines.

I am currently working on developing international health related research activities for the School of Health, Nursing and Midwifery - establishing parternships and exploring opportunities for collaborations that will widen the international opportunities for the staff and students.  I am very interested in health outcomes, the patient voice and psychological mechanisms and outcomes that are associated with this.

• Mental Health including depression, suicide and self-harm
• Perinatal Mental Health and well-being
• Patient experience and the psychological mechanisms underpinning this
• Understanding and improving outcomes for vulnerable groups
• Children and Adolescent Health and Well-being

Mixed methodological approaches

Quantitative statistical techniques e.g. logistic regression

Clinical statistics and emerging statistical techniques e.g. network meta-analyses, indirect comparisons

International private/public healthcare companies for potential partnership/collaboration for training

NHS

European/International Higher Education Institutions