Human Performance Research Centre

Introducing Dr. Oscar Leatherman

My name's Dr. Oscar Leatherman. I'm a lecturer in the Master of Clinical Exercise Physiology Program. I'm also a researcher. I became interested in the area of mental health when I was working as a clinician.

I started my career working in the public health sector, working with people who live with severe mental illness.

So schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other trauma and stress-related disorders.

My research area is really focusing on how we can integrate the benefits of physical activity into mental health services, and for people who live with mental illness in the community.

My program is really looking at how we can use research to advocate for more physical activity programs for those with mental illness, and also how we can adapt existing services so that it meets the needs of those service users.

Typically, there's a really long delay between research and translation into actual practice.

A lot of my work is really focusing on accelerating that time gap.

Really what we're trying to do there is demonstrate something that works and then advocate for more of these clinical programs to be rolled out and diversified across a number of different health settings.

A key reason why I chose to bring my research program here to UTS is because we've got an amazing team of academics across a range of clinical, sporting and other research domains, and so there's a real emphasis here on collaboration.

I was really excited to bring my program here and work with the team to see how we can evaluate and then improve mental health through the use of physical activity.

The greatest impacts of this research is that it not only translates what we know well within the community to mental health services, but it also looks at addressing mental health among community members in general.

That means that all people who are experiencing mental health challenges are going to benefit from the evidence that we're producing into this research.