Every month we celebrate impressive achievements and partnerships within the Macquarie community. Got something to share for next month? Tell us.

Macquarie’s star scientist

Congratulations to Dr Tayyaba Zafar, who has been named among the 2020 NSW Young Tall Poppies by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science.

Tayyaba is an astrophysicist and lecturer at Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) at Macquarie University, with her work focused on what stardust can tell us about the universe.

A strong advocate for encouraging women into STEM, read about Tayabba’s work inspiring the next generation of female scientists.

One overall winner in each state will be announced at the national Tall Poppy Awards later this month.

Historian’s ‘master work’ wins Premier’s prize

Kate Fullagar, an Honorary Professor in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, has won the General History Prize at the 2020 NSW Premier’s History Awards for her book The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist.

By charting the unlikely story of the intersecting lives of three 18th-century­ figures – Cherokee warrior Ostenaco, Raiatean voyager Mai and the British artist who painted them both, Joshua Reynolds – the book challenges our understanding of Indigenous peoples’ interactions with the globalising force of the British Empire.

Yay for our BA

Macquarie’s reimagined Bachelor of Arts – launched this year – has been shortlisted in the Australian Financial Review’s Higher Education Awards in the Employability category.

Designed in consultation with industry partners, the Faculty of Arts created the new degree to equip students with the most in-demand transferable skills like communication, problem solving and critical thinking to prepare them for employment. Throughout the course, students build a digital portfolio to showcase their skills to future employers while learning how humanities subjects can be applied to tackle problems in the world of work.

The AFR Higher Education Award winners will be announced on 18 November.

New grant to support wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people

A team from the Department of Indigenous Studies, made up of Professor Bronwyn Carlson, Madi Day, Dr Tristan Kennedy and Dr Ryan Frazer, has been awarded a $950,000 grant by the Commonwealth Department of Health for a project in partnership with ReachOut Australia.

The project aims to address the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people through an innovative and culturally safe social media campaign and supporting online resources.

Centre for Emotional Health research project awarded $700,000

Bupa Health Foundation has committed approximately $700,000 to a research project aimed at developing a sustainable system to deliver early intervention for mental health through Australian schools.

Working with students, parents, educators and policy-makers, ARC Australian Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor Ron Rapee will lead the project with the aim to develop and test the best possible method to identify youth at risk and test effective pathways to appropriate care.

“Young people with mental health problems rarely reach out for the help that they need. With this support from the Bupa Foundation, we’ll be able to develop innovative methods to identify young people who are in distress and connect them with the most appropriate places to get help,” says Ron.

Macquarie’s course #1 in Australia

In April, Austrade partnered with the social learning platform FutureLearn and Universities across Australia to provide free online courses to help students around the world continue learning during COVID lockdowns and to promote Australia as a quality study destination.

Twenty Higher Education and English Language Training providers released a collection of 52 free short courses onto the FutureLearn site. With over 836,000 enrolments, the campaign has been well received globally.

MUIC-ELC’s ‘Improve your IELTS Speaking Score’ has rated the most popular among these offerings, with 75,000 enrolments, in excess of 35,000 active participants, 7,300 completions and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 for satisfaction.

Director of MUIC and ELC Dr Pamela Humphreys led development and content planning for the course. She says it’s immensely gratifying to see how the course has resonated with international students,.

“We’re so proud that it was number one in the Austrade campaign based on enrolments. The team did an exceptional job putting it together, and it really is a wonderful testament to the quality of teaching we provide at MUIC-ELC.”

Having played elite competitive rugby from a very young age, Michael is aware of the stress which can arise from the pursuit of sporting excellence – especially when you’re also trying to attend to other pursuits such as study, work and relationships.

As an ambassador for Macquarie’s Centre for Emotional Health (CEH), Michael is visiting campus this month for the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Mental Health Youth Forum 2019, where he’ll be speaking to high school students about managing negative feelings, stress and anxiety, and giving them advice on how they can find balance in their pursuits.

We sat down with Michael to find out more about how he manages his mental health as an elite athlete.

When did know that you wanted to make professional Rugby your career?

I think the desire to have a career in rugby was always something I had from the time I started playing at nine years old. But it was probably around the age of 15 or 16, when I was first selected in a national training squad, that I became more focused on the possibility.

How have you dealt with setbacks in your career?

My first year out of school, I was part of a National Academy, but was plagued with a chronic knee injury. I had two surgeries in a couple months, which resulted in some wear on my bones and a diagnosis that arthritis would be a real chance for me. One doctor even said that if I was walking in my mid 20s, it would be an achievement. For an 18-year old, this was obviously confronting.

I dealt with it by just continuing training and focusing on getting back to playing. I leant on my partner who was really supportive and helped significantly in getting me through it. I also chose to distance myself a little bit from rugby, just to refresh and focus on my studies and personal relationships, which often come second to the demands of rugby.

Many young people have to cope with rejection (e.g not making a sporting team) or failure (e.g not performing as well as they’d like in a test). What advice can you give them?

I think rejection is a natural part of life. While it’s hard, and not always fair, you always have to keep perspective. You tend to learn more from rejection than you do from acceptance. And when you don’t make a team or get a good grade for a subject, it allows you to undertake some reflection and internal examination of how you approached it and to ask yourself: Can you be better? Could you have done more? What would you do differently next time?

I feel as though society tends to make us look to shift the blame too much when things don’t go our way. Accountability and ownership for your own shortcomings allows you to stay grounded, but can also keep you motivated when shortfalls or rejection occurs.

Elite athletes can be prone to mental health issues. What can athletes do to deal with feelings that come with loss, rejection or unpredictable change?

It’s something people probably don’t realise from an outside perspective, but professional sport can be quite lonely and even unfulfilling to an extent. Most people who became athletes are incredibly aspirational and driven; they have high standards and set even higher goals for themselves. When their careers are cut short from injury or other circumstances, it’s incredibly hard to deal with, leaving you with the feeling of embarrassment that you haven’t achieved everything you wanted or fulfilled all the hopes others have for you.

Sport can also be quite lonely. You tend to train and travel, separating you from your family and friends back home. You miss important events and milestones, like birthdays and anniversaries. But the biggest aspect of loneliness you feel is getting pigeon-holed as just a sports person. People tend to only talk to you about your sporting endeavours and conversations run dry when you try to shift into general conversation. Your identity is centred on sport and, for most people, that’s who you are. When that’s gone, some individuals lose what they believed was their core personality trait and sense of identity – it can be overwhelming to deal with.

Personally, I’ve tried to keep my personal life separate from rugby. Having relationships that are external to rugby and completely separate from it can really allow you to build a sense of identity that is independent from your sporting career.

What advice can you give to students to help them stay resilient in the face of anxiety or hopelessness?

It might sound condescending, but it’s never as bad or as hopeless as you think. When you’re in the middle of a dilemma or feeling anxiety or depression, it’s hard to see any positive or upside. It’s important to talk and get help, because outside advice can put things into perspective for you. Being able to lean on support networks like friends, family or partners is something that cannot be underestimated.

The Centre for Emotional Health offers a wide range of resources and clinical services for young people and adults dealing with anxiety, depression and other emotional issues.

A person’s ‘body image’ refers to the thoughts and feelings they have about the way they look. While some people have a positive body image and have high self-confidence and respect for their body, we know that the majority of young women and many young men have a negative body image and are dissatisfied with their appearance.

In Mission Australia’s national survey of over 14,000 teenagers, body image is consistently rated as one of their top three concerns. Not only are teenagers and adults concerned with their body but girls as young as five report a desire to change their appearance and are afraid of becoming fat.

This is concerning because negative body image has been linked to many harmful outcomes. For example, being more dissatisfied with your appearance is linked to poorer academic performance, increased interest in cosmetic surgery, poor self-esteem, depression and eating disorders.

Some people suggest that it may be helpful for people in larger bodies to be unhappy with their appearance in order to motivate them to lose weight. But we know that body dissatisfaction is not helpful for anyone, regardless of a person’s size. In fact, making people in larger bodies feel unhappy and ashamed of their appearance often leads them to exercise less and eat less healthily.

There are a variety of physical, psychological, and sociocultural factors that influence a person’s body image. Sociocultural factors, such as pressures from peers, family and the media are arguably the most modifiable and have been the focus of much of the research on body image.

Family, peers and the media can influence body image in a number of ways. Negative thoughts and behaviours can be learned from family and friends. Peers and family can also make critical comments about one’s appearance or engage in appearance-based teasing, which can influence negative body image. The media often portrays a narrow ideal of attractiveness that is unattainable for most people. That ideal is also often promoted on social media, such as Instagram. Accepting the societal beauty ideal and comparing your own appearance to people who match that ideal, whether it be in a magazine or on social media, can also be harmful to body image.

Improving young people’s body image is critically important. We can do this by promoting acceptance of bodies of different shapes and sizes, by reducing the opportunity people have to compare their appearance to unrealistic images and ideals and by discouraging negative appearance-related conversations among peers and families. More research and continued efforts are needed to reduce our society’s focus on appearance and increase positive body image among young people.

If you or someone you know is struggling with negative body image, seek help by contacting the Butterfly Foundation or Headspace.

Just for a moment, think about the kids in your life. Do they engage in fewer activities than they used to? Are they missing a lot of school? Do they have trouble socialising?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, it’s possible that such behaviour is a result of anxiety.

Last year, a survey into the mental health and wellbeing of Australian adolescents found anxiety disorders to be one of the most prevalent forms of mental health problems.

So, the question begs: Why doesn’t anxiety get the same attention as other mental health problems, such as depression and eating disorders?

According to Professor Jennie Hudson, Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University, there are a couple of reasons.

“In the past, people thought it was something that children and teenagers would grow out of naturally, says Hudson. “Also, when a child is anxious, it’s a more internal experience, and it’s often hard to know how much they worry.”

How do you know if your child has an anxiety disorder?

The easiest way to tell is through conversation, as some kids are open to discussing their concerns and behaviours. However, this isn’t always the case.

Other telltale signs include:

• repetitive, negative questioning
• missing activities
• expressions of panic
• restlessness
• easily fatigued
• irritable
• lack of concentration

What not to do

Anxiety is not something that children and adolescents automatically grow out of, and there’s evidence that emotional disorders early in life predict a range of mental health problems later on.

So ignoring the problem and presuming that it will ‘sort itself out’ is simply not the answer.

What to do

Professor Hudson believes that early intervention is the key.

Here are a few ways you can help children who are going through some tough times:

• Offer gentle encouragement of approach – avoidance keeps the anxiety front and centre. Encourage them to gradually face the situation at hand.
• Break it down – break big challenges into small steps, with each small step having sufficient exposure to ease their fears.
• Rewards – rewarding a child who has faced a fear or difficult situation is encouraged.
• Change their thinking – you can do this with simple questions that help them to think of the situation in a different way. Replace worst-case scenarios with questions like ‘what’s the most likely outcome?’ or ‘what happened last time?’
• Seek professional help – if the impact of their anxiety is significant you may want to help them find professional help.

The Centre for Emotional Health – Changing lives

The Centre for Emotional Health (CEH) conducts specialist clinical research aimed at furthering the understanding of child and adult emotional disorders, as well as continually improving methods of treatment. It is a Macquarie University Centre for research excellence.

The Centre is under the directorship of Professor Jennie Hudson, an internationally recognised, leading researcher in the field of youth anxiety.

Visit the webpage for more information and treatment enquiries.

Pioneering Minds Podcast series

Professor Jennie Hudson discusses the genetic markers that indicate anxiety in children, and the most effective ways that parents can help their children avoid and overcome anxiety and depression.

In honour of Mental Health Month in New South Wales, we continue to share information to help remove the stigma associated with mental health and anxiety.

Last week, Professor Jennie Hudson, Director of the Macquarie University Centre for Emotional Health, gave tips for adults on how to manage stress.

This week on the Pioneering Minds podcast, she discusses the genetic markers that indicate anxiety in children and the most effective ways that parents can help their children avoid and overcome anxiety and depression.

Register for Jennie Hudson’s presentation ‘Happy People? Improving our Children’s Emotional Health’ as part of the Macquarie Minds Showcase.

October is Mental Health Month in New South Wales. We asked Professor Jennie Hudson, Director of the Macquarie University Centre for Emotional Health, to give us her expert tips for keeping anxiety and worry in check.

Feeling stressed or worried can be a normal part of life, particularly when you may have an upcoming presentation or deadline at work or during transitions. To prevent stress from taking hold, here are a few strategies that you can put in place:

1. Don’t avoid the situation

As tempting as it is, stress and anxiety thrive when you avoid. One of the most effective ways to overcome fear and anxiety is by facing the feared situation. This is best done in a gradual way, starting with an easy step and working up to more difficult situations.  For example, if you are worried about delivering a presentation at work, start by practising by yourself, then try presenting to your partner or friend, and then in front of a group of trusted colleagues at work.

2. Explore and challenge your thinking

Anxiety and fear occur when you think something bad is going to happen. Sometimes, particularly in times of stress, people might be more likely to over-estimate the likelihood of something negative occurring and underestimate their ability to cope with it. Identifying and challenging your thoughts can help. Ask yourself “What do I think will happen?” and explore other possible explanations and different points of view. Revise your original thought by considering the alternative possibilities you’ve come up with.

3. Focus on the task

High anxiety can take your mind away from the situation and make you focus on your worried thoughts. Practise staying focused on the task by training yourself to attend to the task at hand.

4. Find a relaxation or ‘switching off’ technique that works for you

The arousal that comes with anxiety can’t hurt you, but if you want to reduce your arousal, there are a number of different techniques that can work if you practice them. Some people find deep breathing, going for a walk/run, taking an exercise class or taking a technology break can help. Regular physical activity, breaks, sleep and healthy eating all contribute to emotional well-being and health.

5. Talk to someone

Sometimes it can help to talk to a trusted friend or partner. If they are a good listener, they might help you to get perspective on the situation. If you find that your worry and anxiety is interfering with your daily routine or preventing you from enjoying life, then it would be useful to see a professional. Effective help that involves practical strategies is available.

The Centre for Emotional Health (CEH) is a Macquarie University Centre for research excellence that focuses on the understanding, treatment and prevention of anxiety, depression and other emotional health disorders.