Ms Aliza Hunt

BA (Hons Psy) and DML University of Melbourne
Visiting Fellow

Biography

Aliza Hunt is a Visiting Fellow at theCentre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University (ANU), Australia. Aliza is previously an Endeavour Postgraduate Scholar; this has facilitated a year-long visiting researcher placement at the Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH) at the University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia and a 3-month internship with the Cultural Consulting Service.

Her PhD project involved a critical look at assessing the mental health needs of older rural Indonesians. She has undertaken a multistage multimethod approach that includes full enumeration of all 60 and over year olds in ten Indonesian rural villages using a survey approach.  This was followed-up by a full enumeration of two of these villages and a selection of participants for in depth qualitative interview. Her work aims to explore prevalence, predictors and treatment of older Indonesians suffering from mood and anxiety type symptoms and critically evaluate the suitability of dominant typologies of mental illness (i.e. ICD, DSM and the Indonesian PPDGJ) for use with older Indonesian villagers.

Aliza is also working on projects related to diagnosing and treating depression in the general adult Indonesian population and in advocacy work related to the Indonesian anti-pasung (chaining/restraint) reform movement and the community based mental healthcare movement through her work with CPMH. Aliza’s work is cross-disciplinary, but she has a background in Psychology, Demography and Indonesian Studies.

Her work is supported by the Grace Groom Memorial Scholarship, the Endeavour Awards, the Australian Postgraduate Award Scheme, the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Aging Research, the Indonesian Project at the ANU and various VC and departmental grants.

Research

Research interests

  • Mental Health
  • Indonesia
  • Older Persons
  • Mental Health Systems
  • Advocacy
  • Depression
  • Transcultural Psychiatry and Cultural Psychology

Publications

  • Hunt, A., Setiyawati, D., & Guth, R. (manuscript submitted to reviewers). Evaluating the Indonesia Free Pasung Movement: Stopping physical restraint of the mentally ill in rural Java. Transcultural Psychiatry.
  • Hunt, A. (in press). From Data to the Clinic: Understanding Indonesian Depression in Good, B., Good, M.J., & Pols, H. (ed) The Future of Psychiatry in Indonesia. Jakarta: Kompas (Indonesian and English ed).