A MARY Immaculate College PhD research student has won a Government of Ireland Postgraduate scholarship, which will enable her to research how mental health programmes can combat suicide among adolescents.
Maryanne Lowney from Ennis Road will focus on how mental health programmes can be created and sustained to combat adolescent alienation, self-harm, attempted suicide and death by suicide.
Her project will be carried out in conjunction with Mary Immaculate College and Kerry Education and Training Board (ETB), with a sample of second level schools in County Kerry.
Ms Lowney said that “there has not been a full and comprehensive review of the co-ordination and implementation of mental health promotion in second level schools to date”.
She added that innovative research in the area “can potentially help to shed fresh light on the strategic planning and implementation approaches underpinning current mental health promotion models and yield recommendations for future practice in schools”.
Prof Jim Deegan, head of the MIC Graduate School commented: “Maryanne has witnessed first hand many of the challenges facing adolescents in post-primary schools and also those who strive to support them as teachers and mentors in the course of her day-to-day professional life with Kerry ETB.
“Little research exists on the interactive and irreducible dynamic between teachers, mentors and adolescents in the context of positive mental health promotion and the outcomes of her research will be welcomed by policymakers, practitioners and young people throughout the country.”
