Sarah Hetrick

Dr Hetrick is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Youth Mental Health in the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, and an honorary Principal Fellow in the Centre of Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne with strong collaborative working partnerships with Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health and the Centre for Mental Health in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne.

Dr Hetrick has an international reputation in evidence synthesis and knowledge translation. She is an editor with the Cochrane Common Mental Disorders Group and devised and leads a major initiative called ‘evidence mapping in youth mental health”, which allows clinicians to search for the latest evidence about how to treat a range of disorders. She leads and provides methodological consultation to a large number of systematic review teams. She is the lead author on a number of Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews about interventions to prevent and treat young people with depression and suicide, many of which are the basis for recommendations in international clinical practice guidelines. She has previously held an NHMRC Training Fellowship the focus of which was on ensuring guideline recommendations for the treatment of youth depression were implemented in everyday clinical practice by clinicians.

She has established a program of primary research investigating effective interventions for preventing and treating young people with depression and suicide. For example she is an investigator on randomised controlled trials investigating a range of interventions that include 1. low intensity interventions such as problem solving intervention and physical activity; 2. standard interventions currently used in standard clinical practice such as combiantion CBT and fluoxetine; and, 3. novel interventions such as adjunctive statins and online cognitive behavioural therapy for suicidal youth. A key focus of this work is exploring the process of change that results in treatment effectiveness during therapeutic interventions, and factors that modify treatment outcomes.