Mental Health Nursing Scientist
Mental Health Nursing | Mental Health | Digital Health | First Nations Social & Emotional Wellbeing | Menopause
RN CMHN PhD
About Prof. Rhonda Wilson RN CMHN PhD
Biography
Professor Rhonda Wilson [RN CMHN FACMHN BNSc (JCU) MN(Hons) (UNE) PhD (UNE)] is an internationally recognised mental health nursing scientist with a research focus on digital health interventions. She is Professor of Mental Health Nursing at RMIT University, Australia, where she leads an innovative digital mental health nursing laboratory, including supervising PhD students. She is a Registered Nurse and a Credentialed Mental Health Nurse in Australia and has worked across various roles as a clinical nurse, researcher and academic in Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and Spain over the past 38 years.
Rhonda is a vigorous advocate and activist for the promotion of cultural safety and decolonisation in our education and health institutions.
She has published extensively in international journals, books and conferences. She has a track record of leading national and international mental health mixed methods research programs, including using methods suited to priority populations, and First Nations peoples. She has a depth of experience in the development and management of funded large-scale multinational digital mental health tailored and implemented studies.
Rhonda has worked in a wide range of rural and regional clinical registered nursing roles throughout Northern Queensland, North Western Victoria, South Western Queensland and returning to the New England of NSW region in 2005. She commenced her academic career as a lecturer in mental health nursing at UNE in 2008, leaving in 2016 for a post in Denmark as Associate Professor and Director of a Telepsychiatric Research Centre at the University of Southern Denmark. Her leadership was instrumental in driving national implementation of digital solutions including an innovative model of care in telepsychiatry for mild to moderate psychiatric conditions as treatment as usual.
Back in Australia, and during lockdown restrictions at the height of a Covid-19 outbreak in Walgett, NSW 2021, she partnered with Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service and her university colleagues, to go to Walgett to undertake an early humanitarian vaccination campaign to provide urgent protection for the Walgett community.
As a senior academic with leadership experience having worked for six universities, Rhonda continues with a wide international and national network and program of research based remotely on the traditional Darkinjung Country, Central Coast NSW, Australia, working for RMIT University.
She is the current President of the peak body, Australian College of Mental Health Nurses.
First Nations Acknowledgement
- I acknowledge the Darkinjung Traditional Custodians of the land where I reside, and pay yindyamarra (respect) to them and and their past and present Elders. I recognise and pay yindyamarra to First Nations people in Australia, and throughout the world.
- As a First Nations Wiradjuri descendant and yinaa, with cultural obligation, respect and urgency, I aim to continuously produce culturally safe scientific evidence towards strengthening and improving the health and social and emotional wellbeing outcomes of First Nation Peoples.
- Image: Commissioned Coolamon by Artist George Williams 2024. Yarning about the social and emotional wellbeing of First Nations people with family, community, and connection to culture is central. Colonisation has disrupted social and emotional wellbeing in many ways. Recovery is in progress with more work to be done. This coolamon (traditionally used to hold food or perhaps a baby) holds a new story to promote social and emotional well-being for First Nations people.
Commitment to improving the health the mental health and social & emotional well-being outcomes of First Nations peoples
- My mental health nursing philosophical approach is informed by the Wiradjuri concept of yindyamurra. That is, to conduct my work throughly in a spirit of respect, unhurried yet timely, and with the dedication required. I acknowledge the strength that lies within an Indigenous stand-point that includes an attitude of listening carefully in politeness and gentleness.
- My goal is to champion Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing and belonging and to integrate these into my clinical and academic practice, scholarship, research methods, dissemination and supervision.
- I recognise that culturally safe practice is the responsibility of all registered nurses in Australia.
- Decolonisation and truth-telling mitigates the harms colonisation.
- Social determinants of mental health and social & emotional well-being are politically modifiable determinants.
- My commitment is to create culturally safe evidence to support improved outcomes for First Nations people.