Measuring and Improving Wellbeing
Associate Professor Justine Gatt
Associate Professor Justine Gatt
Associate Professor Justine Gatt
Associate Professor Justine Gatt is Head of the Gatt Resilience Group at UNSW and NeuRA, and Lead of the new Mental Wellbeing Centre at NeuRA. Since 2006, she has led a mental wellbeing and resilience research program that spans neuroscience through to clinical translation, including leadership of more than 15 neuroscience, longitudinal and randomised controlled trials in young people and adults.
Associate Professor Gatt obtained her PhD in Psychology at the University of Sydney in 2005, followed by postdoctoral research in psychiatric neuroscience at the Brain Dynamics Centre, University of Sydney. She has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed publications, including a book and three book chapters. In 2014, she developed and published the COMPAS-W Wellbeing Scale, the first composite index of wellbeing, which has since been adopted in more than 30 research and clinical projects.
Her work has been recognised by multiple awards including the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research, the NHMRC Excellence Award for Top Ranked Career Development Fellowship Applicant, and the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) Success Story awarded to the WUN Resilience Group for Exceptional Levels of Achievement, for which Gatt was Lead Coordinator in a 6-site international trial in youth resilience.
Mental health is more than the absence of mental illness; it is also about positive wellbeing. Across Australia, fewer than a quarter of people report “flourishing”, or optimal wellbeing, while up to 20 per cent have a diagnosable mental illness. This means that at any given time, many people are not mentally unwell but still have room for improvement in their wellbeing.
About the project
Associate Professor Gatt’s team developed one of the first wellbeing scales, called COMPAS-W, which uniquely measures different components of wellbeing in:
- Patients receiving care from in-patient mental health services
- Mental health staff across the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD)
- Young people attending a headspace mental health service.
From these learnings, the team developed two wellbeing programs which they are currently evaluating:
- The Thrive Wellbeing Program, a 7-week program for health care workers, focusing on developing healthy habits across seven domains of life including sleep, exercise, nutrition, dealing with stress, social connection, mental challenges, and life purpose.
- ReNeuWell®, a phone app that measures wellbeing and provides information and techniques on improving wellbeing and resilience for the general population. ReNeuWell was launched on the Apple Store in early 2023.
Achievements and Outcomes
The project helped deliver wellbeing programs to over 200 participants including healthcare workers and people living with mental illness.
The team developed a state-of-the-art smartphone app that integrates measures of wellbeing for use in the general population.
It also successfully obtained additional funding and resources to continue key trials following this funded project.
Project Status
The original project ran from January 2020 until September 2023, with start-up funding provided by Mindgardens. While the work with Mindgardens has concluded, the research team have secured additional funding and resources to continue work in this area.
Funding Sources
- Commonwealth grant funding awarded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
- NHMRC Project Grant
Other Projects
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Mindgardens Functional Neurological Disorders Clinic
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We acknowledge the voices of people with lived experience, their carers, families and kinship groups. We recognise the expertise acquired through living with a mental health, drug and alcohol or neurological disorder and acknowledge those who care for people on their recovery journey. We place lived experience at the heart of all that we do.
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