Elaine is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Youth Mental Health at the National Suicide Research Foundation. Her work is funded by the Health Research Board as part of the Inter-Disciplinary Capacity Enhancement (ICE) programme and involves inter-disciplinary research investigating the prevalence and correlates of adolescent mental ill-health.
Elaine is a graduate of University College Cork and has worked as a research fellow at University College London. In 2012 she completed her PhD at the National Suicide Research Foundation and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College Cork. Her doctoral work examined the psycho-social factors associated with deliberate self-harm in Irish adolescents. She has published papers on various topics including the relative incidence of adolescent suicide and self-harm; associations between bullying and mental health problems; associations between coping style and mental in adolescents and the effects of exposure to suicidal behaviour.
Her work has involved international collaborations with the Child and Adolescent Self-Harm in Europe (CASE study) consortium and the multi-centre Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE) study and she has published her research in high-impact international journals.