Affiliation: University of Newcastle Australia
Professor Mike Hazelton has worked in different parts of Australia – New South, Western Australia and Tasmania, and has had extensive experience leading schools of nursing at the University of Tasmania, Curtin University and the University of Newcastle. He is Honorary Director of the Halla /Newcastle Centre for Problem Based Learning, Cheju Halla University, Republic of Korea and was Visiting Professor in the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds between May and September 2010.
Professor Hazelton’s clinical work as Professor of Mental Health Nursing has included involvement in various types of cognitive behaviour therapy. For instance, he participated as both an individual therapist and group skills therapist in the delivery of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for borderline personality disorder in the Centre for Psychotherapy, Hunter New England Area Health Service between 2005 and 2010. He was also involved in a program providing group-based cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for depression to clients referred by local general practitioners in the Newcastle/Hunter region in 2006 and 2009. Professor Hazelton is also an accredited Mental Health First Aid Master Trainer and has provided mental health first aid training to students, university staff and community members since 2009. Many of Professor Hazelton’s research publications and presentations reflect his ongoing commitment to clinical work and health professional education.
Professor Hazelton has a research background in both qualitative and quantitative methods, has published widely on mental health and mental health nursing and has undertaken consultancies for various governments, both Commonwealth and State in Australia. A particular area of focus in his work is on discourses of mental health, illness and recovery. Professor Hazelton is a past Editor of the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing and is currently a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. To date he has supervised 16 PhD students to successful completion; been the recipient of a number of awards for mental health nursing research; and in 2003 was made a Life Member of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, the highest honour awarded by that professional organisation.