Dr. Chris Bowden BA Hons I, MA, Ph.D Health
Dr. Chris Bowden is a lecturer in Te Puna Akopai/ School of Education at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington. He teaches in the area of child and adolescent development in the undergraduate programme, and child and adolescent mental health, and counselling and in the Masters of Educational Psychology programme.
His areas of expertise include: suicide theories, youth suicide, male suicide, suicide bereavement, grief and loss, coping and resiliency, trauma and trauma-informed education.
His research focuses on suicide bereavement, trauma survivorship, resiliency, and psychological wellbeing. Chris has an interest in programme design and evaluation and developed New Zealand's first national psychoeducational programme for suicide-loss survivors (Waves) in conjunction with Skylight Trust.
Chris works in the area of suicide prevention and postvention providing professional development and education, advice and support to regional suicide prevention coordinators, supervision and sits on a number of advisory and reference groups and boards.
Chris is the Academic Director of Mates in Construction NZ, an Agent of Wellington Regional Child and Youth Mortality Review Group, and an Advisory Board member for the Mental Health Foundation Suicide Bereavement Service.
Accepting HRD students: N
Current and Future Research Projects
1. Rapid review of national and international literature to identify current psychosocial hazards in construction using Job Demands-Resource Theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017) to identify interventions (primary, secondary, tertiary) to address hazards. [Dr. Lixin Jiang, lead researcher]
2. Exploration of construction stakeholder (government/peak body, client, boots on ground, labour hire) perspectives on: (i) main psychosocial hazards in construction sector, (ii) acceptability of evidence-based interventions, (iii) ability, willingness and readiness to select/implement/ access interventions, (iv) barriers and facilitators to implementation, and (v) content/features of tool/blueprint/roadmap that would best support sector to make change. [Dr. Gabrielle Jenkin, lead researcher]
