PhD scholarship recipient

Congratulations to Rigel Paciente who has been awarded the Rio Tinto Children’s Diabetes Centre; a Breakthrough T1D Centre of Excellence, Top-up PhD Scholarship.

The Top-up PhD Scholarship is designed to provide additional support to exceptional PhD students who are undertaking their research in the type 1 diabetes (T1D) - related field.

Rigel is a Research Assistant at the Kids Research Institute Australia and a PhD Candidate at the UWA Medical School.

They received the funding support for their research project ‘The phenomenology of suicidal and self-injurious thoughts and behaviours in young people living with Type 1 Diabetes: The PERSIST study’

Rigel said The PERSIST study would aim to explore young people with T1Ds’ experiences of suicidal and/or self-injurious thoughts and behaviours, from onset and ongoing experiences to help-seeking.

"We know that suicide and self-injury prevention is underexplored in T1D settings, which means that young people with T1D who may be experiencing these concerns may not be receiving appropriate help through crises," Rigel said

We also aim to work with clinicians in the space to improve therapeutic alliance with the young people, encourage help-seeking behaviours, and to ensure that suicidal/self-injurious thoughts and behaviours are responded to rather than ignored or suppressed."

Rigel said this topic was borne from a previous study that they led, which looked at the experiences of medical trauma in young people living with T1D.

"In that study, some of our young people reported experiences of suicidality and self-injury as a result of medical trauma, but was not met with adequate support, if any. This PhD is a direct response to the need for further support, and thus bolstering suicide and self-injury prevention in the T1D space."

The Centre’s competitive scholarship program aims to support the next generation of researchers and health professionals in the Diabetes field. The scholarship has been made possible through funding support by Rio Tinto, Telethon Trust and Breakthrough T1D Australia.