Theme lead: Dr Silvia Riva
Why
A number of extraordinary health challenges are currently faced by the world. The global pandemic, healthcare inequalities, demographic changes, new lifestyle habits and long-term mental disorders threaten to stymie progress in improving health in the 21st century. Further, these challenges emphasize the importance of addressing health issues from a multidimensional perspective in the 21st century. The key to protecting and improving health and wellbeing is to keep an open mind and look at the big picture. Among the real-world challenges that the Biopsychosocial Health and Wellbeing Cluster seeks to address are psychological burdens after the pandemic, vaccination choices, quality of life with learning disabilities, and attitudes toward environmental awareness, to name just a few. The pursuit of all these research goals brings together researchers from across the University and brings them together with external collaborators.
What
The Biopsychosocial Health and Wellbeing Cluster is an interdisciplinary research unit within the Centre for Applied Social and Health Sciences at St. Mary’s University. It is our intention to foster collaborations between researchers, to build connections between researchers outside of academia, and to conduct research that improves the health and wellbeing of populations (e.g., patients with chronic or long-term conditions). The theme is also interested in reinforcing collaborations with and for industry to meet their needs.
It is our commitment to conduct research that has a real-world impact. It is our mission to promote research that is value-based. It is our goal to lead the transformation of healthcare through innovation and promotion of justice and equality. We welcome new students, researchers, advocacy groups and charities, and fellow academics to participate in our research partnerships and collaborations. Furthermore, we offer a wide range of learning resources such as guest lectures, workshops, and research consultations.
How
The bio-psycho-social model of health provides the overarching guidance for this cluster. The biopsychosocial model is both a philosophy and a practical guide to health. Philosophically, it is an approach that tries to grasp how societal, psychological, and physical factors influence disorders, disease, and illness. On a practical level, it is an important guidance of understanding subjective experiences of health, health outcomes, and humane care.
Researchers working on our research interests come from a wide variety of disciplines, including Psychology, Cognitive Science, Biology, Sport Science, and Education. Supporting postgraduate students, PhD students and early career researchers is also an important part of our research policy. Throughout the team, we are united by the motivation to support health from a multidimensional perspective (i.e., social, biological, and psychological).
We are interested in a variety of theories and different participatory methods, such as the "Patient-Centered Outcomes Research" (Frank, Basch, & Selby, 2014) or the "User-Centered Design Research" (e.g. Mao, Vredenburg, Smith & Carey 2005), and complex approaches (Skivington et al., 2021).