Congratulations to Jorgen Gullestrup, the 2021 recipient of the ‘MATES in Construction Allison Milner Memorial PhD Scholarship’

The Allison Milner Memorial PhD Scholarship was established by MATES in Construction to honour thelegacy of Associate Professor Allison Milner. Allison served as the National Academic Director of MATESfrom 2013 until her untimely passing in 2019. She was a prolific researcher who championed efforts tocurtail the high suicide rate among workers – predominantly men – in blue collar industries.

This scholarship is an important avenue through which talented and dedicated PhD candidates can besupported to continue the research highly valued by Allison, and the MATES team. The scholarship fundsPhD research that addresses suicide prevention in blue collar industries within Australia.

Congratulations Jorgen, how do you feel about being the 2021 recipient of the 'Allison MilnerMemorial PhD Scolarship'?

“It actually means quite a lot to me because I’ve been with MATES in Construction since the start ofcourse, but even more than that, I was very close to Allison Milner, she was one my good mates.

Allison was incredible.

I was almost part of the birth of one of her children! We were arguing about a research project thisparticular day, and I said, “What are you doing? and she said, ‘I’ve just given birth.’

She was in the maternity ward recovering, that’s the kind of person she was.

So, it does means a lot to me because I knew Ally so well and I have had such a long connection withinthe industry and MATES in Construction.

What is the topic of your PhD?

"Male help offering in suicide prevention and specifically contextualised for MATES. So what I have doneso far is I have written up a review of all the evidence around MATES so far to identify some of the holesand my project is to do interviews with 30 construction workers and find out how they offer help tomates. All different ways to help, from asking someone how they’re going, to posters and resources togoing to the union and saying do we have a mental health clause in our agreement? So, a really broadspectrum of ways people can actually put themselves forward to make a difference for other people.That’s what I define as help offering. In suicide prevention that’s a really new concept.

This is something we’ve only really just started discussing. Even when we look at the literature, they onlyreally discuss help offering in suicide prevention as sort of an aid to help seeking. So, when they discusshelp offering – that very narrow thing about finding the guy who’s struggling and taking him to a doctor- where the concept of my theory is much wider.

Part of that is to identify as many different ways that people offer help that I can find within the MATESprogram. Then the second stage of that is to get 1000 surveys completed where we look at determinantsof how people offer help. Are there any groups in the industry more likely to offer for help in any specificway, more than others?

Does it make a difference whether you’re the supervisor or a union delegate or an apprentice inthe way you engage in or offer help, because that could help MATES target their program betterand make a bigger impact on suicide reduction in their key industries."