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Staff Profile

Dr Sally O'Keeffe

Mental Health Fellow

Background

I am a Mental Health Fellow in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration for the North East and North Cumbria. I am a mixed methods researcher, and my work seeks to develop and test the effectiveness of interventions for youth mental health problems. I have a particular interest in interventions for self-harm and suicide prevention in young people. I am co-investigator on the Support Adolescents with Self-Harm (SASH) trial which is testing Therapeutic Assessment, Safety Planning and Solution Focused Follow-up Sessions for adolescents presenting to A&E with self-harm (www.sashstudy.co.uk).


Before joining Newcastle University, I worked at City University of London as Programme Manager on a £2.7 million NIHR programme grant, ‘ASsuRED: Improving outcomes in patients who self-harm – Adapting and evaluating a brief pSychological inteRvention in Emergency Departments’ (Assured). Prior to that, I worked at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families on the 'Improving Mood with Psychoanalytic and Cognitive Therapies' (IMPACT) trial and the qualitative sibling study, IMPACT-My Experience (IMPACT-ME). I undertook my PhD at University College London as part of the IMPACT and IMPACT-ME studies, which investigated treatment dropout for young people receiving therapy for depression. I developed a particular interest in mixed-methods, including ideal-type analysis which is a qualitative method for constructing typologies. I have co-authored a book on ideal-type analysis, published as part of a qualitative methods series by the American Psychological Association.

Research

Research Interests

  • Young people's mental health
  • Self-harm and suicide prevention
  • Mixed methods research


Funding

  • McCabe, R., O'Keeffe, S., Priebe, S., Ougrin, D., Martin, P., & Feng, Y. (2020). A Psychological Intervention to Reduce Suicidal Behaviour in Adolescence. The Kavli Trust £750,000.
Publications