Phil Batterham
pbatterham.bsky.social
Phil Batterham
@pbatterham.bsky.social
Professor in mental health and suicide prevention, Australian National University. Views are my own.
New paper: cohort profile for the LifeTrack Project, providing new insights into suicidal distress (open access) doi.org/10.1016/j.ps...
Redirecting
doi.org
April 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
Are you keen to pursue further studies in health, health law, bioethics, or a related field, to promote the health of people with innate variations of sex characteristics? Consider this PhD scholarship for domestic (Australian/NZ) students! Closing date: 27 April

www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships...
Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Improving the Health of People Born with Innate Variations of Sex Characteristics
Up to $30,000 scholarship to support a student who is undertaking research in the field of bioethics or health law related to the Interconnect Health Research project’s focus.
www.sydney.edu.au
April 7, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
The entire National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) team at SAMHSA was terminated today.

Do not listen to the platitudes of this administration when they say they care about drug overdose, addiction, mental health, or suicide.
April 1, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Evidence & Implementation Summit 2025 should be an enriching experience at a critical time. Abstracts close 18 May.
ICYMI: Call for Abstracts now open!

EIS is returning to a fully face-to-face format.
With new presentation options & a revamped call for abstracts, #EIS2025 will provide more opportunities than ever to learn, share & grow your networks

See more: www.eisummit.org/abstracts

#ImpSci #Evidence
March 31, 2025 at 1:53 AM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
Keep posted: we’ll be advertising two fully funded PhDs soon on (1) inequalities, poverty and suicide risk and (2) suicide risk in agricultural communities
March 28, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
The total Australian Research Council budget is $1bn.
Always remember - budgets are about choices
www.theguardian.com/business/gro...
March 20, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.
March 19, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
People might think that whatever destruction is done to science in the US, we can undo in 4 years with a Democratic president and Congress.

The problem is that many areas require specialized knowledge and skills built up over years, and once that's lost, it's hard to get back.
The damage will be far worse than just a 4-yr gap. Both I and the individual who has managed this site for most of the past 50 yrs are retiring within the next 2 years. With this closure, we will not be able to plan a transition.
March 16, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
I’m told this is a real letter. It basically says, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”
March 14, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
International Society for Research on Internet Interventions Free webinar:
Digital mental health services in large trials or routine care
with @stephenschueller.bsky.social, Matthew Coleshill, Andrea Graham, Nick Titov

March 25/26
isrii.org/event/isig-w...
March 11, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
Latest report from @amfarofficial.bsky.social showing for every $1 of #NIH funding received, a state generates $2.46 on average in increased economic activity.

Cutting #NIH grants doesn't make economic sense.

www.amfar.org/news/how-nih...
March 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Abstracts are now open for the Evidence and Implementation Summit, Melbourne 27-29 October. www.eisummit.org/abstracts
Call for Abstracts | EIS 2025
Submit an abstract for the Evidence and Implementation Summit (EIS) 2025 taking place in Melbourne 27-29 October 2025.
www.eisummit.org
February 24, 2025 at 3:16 AM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
Any talk you hear from the current administration about making the US more competitive in science and technology is utter bullshit. What they are doing is sabotaging our country for years if not decades to come.
February 22, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
How we did it: Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did
Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did
Since Texas banned abortion, no one has studied the statewide effects on pregnant women experiencing complications. Here’s how we sifted through data on millions of pregnancy hospitalizations and anal...
www.propublica.org
February 20, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
DOGE recommended firing workers at:

-FDA, which oversees Neuralink

-FAA, which oversees SpaceX

-USAID, which probed Starlink

-CFPB, which oversees Tesla's financing arm and a potential payment platform on X.

"Conflict of interest" is a severe understatement.
February 19, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
NIH cuts indirect rates on grants to 15%.

This will be the end of American excellence in science.

Universities will struggle and many (likely most) will terminate their research programs.

Independent research institutions will not be able to survive this.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
NOT-OD-25-068: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates NOT-OD-25-068. OD
grants.nih.gov
February 7, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
February 4, 2025 at 1:26 AM
An absolute disgrace... anticipating a mass exodus of the brightest minds from the US where science and expertise are no longer welcome
Apparently all the PhD researchers holding prestigious NSF-funded research fellowships are having their salaries withheld until some unspecified time when the leadership figures out how to eliminate any grant funding that doesn’t align with the president’s political ideology.
It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.
January 30, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Published in British J Psychiatry, my thoughts on the problems with trying to predict suicidal behaviour and a call to end poorly conceived machine learning studies: doi.org/10.1192/bjp....
Prediction of suicidal behaviour as a three-body problem | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core
Prediction of suicidal behaviour as a three-body problem - Volume 226 Issue 1
doi.org
January 30, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
In an email the authors summarised "A key finding from this work is that there is limited statistical evidence to support the presence or absence of most edges in published networks. Approximately 80% of the edges we analyzed lack robust statistical support from the data."
(shared with permission) 🧵
Are psychometric networks sufficiently supported by data such that one can be confident when interpreting its results? We analysed 294 psychometric networks from 126 papers with the Bayesian approach to address this question @jmbh.bsky.social Sara Ruth van Holst @maartenmarsman.bsky.social 🧵
Statistical Evidence in Psychological Networks: A Bayesian Analysis of 294 Networks from 126 Studies: http://osf.io/62ydg/
January 24, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
The price of eggs in the US is spiking, mostly due to #H5N1 bird flu. Solving the problem requires urgent, important communications from the CDC & FDA* and rapid development of research by the NIH**

* Currently paused by Executive Order
** Grant reviews now all canceled
www.kcur.org/news/2025-01...
Egg prices are soaring again. Here’s why and what to expect
Bird flu has killed millions of hens in recent weeks, shrinking the supply of eggs and hiking up prices at grocery stores.
www.kcur.org
January 23, 2025 at 5:18 PM
The stigma of anxiety disorders is alive and well in The Australian: "Parents should not indulge in conversations about negative feelings" and more dross - blame the parents and don't seek help?? (fortunately paywalled) www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/ne...
www.theaustralian.com.au
January 12, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
Greetings fellow, er, blueskiers?? I should probably start posting on here. How's this for starters: a fab opportunity to join team Nature! We're hiring a full time news reporter based in Berlin or Sydney: www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/41...
(Senior) Reporter (m/w/d)
Job Title: (Senior) Reporter (m/w/d) Locations: Berlin or Syndey – hybrid working model; full time, permanent contract Application Deadline: January 20th 2025 About Springer Nature Group Springer Natu...
springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com
January 7, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Phil Batterham
"A study of federally funded research projects in the United States estimated that principal investigators spend on average about 45% of their time on administrative activities related to applying for and managing projects rather than conducting active research"

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
January 4, 2025 at 1:26 PM