Team
Founder & Principal Trainer
Dr. John Gosling received his undergraduate degree and PhD from ANU, during which time he was awarded the ANU Centre for Mental Health Research Korten Prize, the National Black Puppy Award, and the ANU School of Psychology Honours Thesis Prize. John has taught at both the undergraduate and Master's levels, is a licensed Mental Health First Aid Instructor, has delivered suicide prevention workshops in high schools, and has peer-reviewed publications on the treatment and prevention of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidality.
Alongside these credentials John has a lived experience of mental illness, giving him unique insight, understanding, and empathy when it comes to those living with mental illness in Australia. He has been described as a passionate and engaging presenter.
Read more about John here.
Clinical Advisor
Dr Li Lim is a practicing clinical psychologist who has worked across academia, private practice, and government settings. She completed a Master's of Clinical Psychology at UQ and, prior to that, a PhD in social psychology at the ANU. Li completed a postdoctoral fellow position at the ANU, doing research on voice expectations and desires among minority group members. She has also taught across all year levels at university, having lectured and coordinated undergraduate courses, and tutored postgraduate courses.
Since completing her clinical Master's, Li has worked with a range of mental health presentations across the lifespan, including anxiety, depression, personality disorders, and trauma. She is currently working on a project with Child and Youth Protection Services, researching and designing a safer driving program for young people who have offended.
Advisor: Neurodiversity
Dr Daniel Skorich is a Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University, and a former Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland. Daniel’s research interests are broadly in the domain of social cognition, self-categorization, and social psychology, with offshoots in clinical psychology, health psychology, computational theories of mind; and a specific focus on social cognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders, face perception, and consciousness.
Daniel is currently co-authoring a book on the nature of the self (Routledge, 2024), which provides an integrated account of person and group processing across a wide variety of domains and, among other things, introduces a new model of impression formation and stereotype formation.
Advisor: Suicide
Dr. Bree van Spijker received her MPsych and PhD from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, focusing her research in the area of suicide prevention. She was part of the Dutch team that built the first web-based treatment for suicidal thinking, and was subsequently the instrumental in translating this program into English and testing it in Australia. Bree has published on online suicide prevention, the measurement of suicide ideation in the community, worry and rumination as they relate to suicidality, interpersonal-psychological theory of suicidal behaviour, and the disease burden of living with suicidal thoughts. Furthermore, Bree has lived and worked in Suriname, South America, where she conducted psychological autopsies with families bereaved by suicide.
Bree is the co-author of a Dutch self-help book for suicidal thinking, in the process of being updated and rereleased, and now works in the justice system.