Deirdre Gartland

Dr Deirdre Gartland completed a BSc (Psychology Honors) at the University of Melbourne and a Professional Doctorate in Health Psychology at Swinburne University in 2009, developing the first international measure of resilience in adolescence, while at the Centre for Adolescent Health, Royal Children's Hospital.

Dr Gartland leads the Resilience and Mental Health stream in Intergenerational Health research group at Murdoch Children's Research Institute. Her research seeks to better understand women and children’s health, particularly for families at high risk of social adversity. Her research over the last 10 years has focused on the impact of intimate partner violence on mothers and their children. She has a particular focus on building the evidence needed to better support families experiencing adversity, including families experiencing violence. She is currently working with Aboriginal, refugee background communities and families who have experience violence to measure and describe child resilience.

She is a member of PreVAiL, an international research collaboration of over 60 researchers and partners funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The goal of the collaboration is to bring together researchers and decision-makers to produce and share knowledge to help children, women and men exposed to family violence. She is also a member of the Melbourne Research Alliance to End Violence against Women and their Children. Collaborators include: Prof Harriet McMillan (McMaster University, Canada), Prof Christine McArthur (University of Birmingham, UK), Professor Helen Herrman (President World Psychiatric Association). She is an investigator on the Centre for Research Excellence: Stronger Futures, with the aim to better understand the impacts of intergenerational trauma, prevention and building resilience in the context of trauma, and how to support healing and recovery, to inform effective health and social service responses.