Rate My Professor Elisabeth Wells

Emeritus Professor Elisabeth Wells, BSc(Hons) PhD, is a biostatistician in the Department of Population Health at the University of Otago, Christchurch, and serves as part-time Professor in the Biostatistics and Computational Biology Unit. Her career includes research contracts and consultancies from 1992, such as with the Ministry of Health for the Mental Health Epidemiology Study from 1999 to 2007 and further dataset use from 2007 to 2008. She served on the Interim Monitoring Group for the 2006-2007 New Zealand Health Survey and was appointed to a committee reviewing the Blueprint for Mental Health Services in 1997. As principal investigator and statistician, Wells led the New Zealand Mental Health Survey (Te Rau Hinengaro) in 2004, a national survey of 12,000 adults aged 16 and over, contributing to the World Mental Health Survey Initiative. She has co-investigated in Health Research Council-funded projects, including longitudinal studies of mental health and psychosocial wellbeing (2004, 2007), the Christchurch Health and Development Study to age 35 (2011), and Hauora Manawa Community Health Study. Wells supervised PhD theses on decriminalisation of sex work as a harm minimisation approach (Gillian Abel, 2010) and mental health of Pacific peoples (ongoing). She received the 2009 Gold Medal for Research Excellence from the University of Otago, Christchurch, and holds memberships in the New Zealand Statistical Association, the Epidemiology and Public Health Section of the World Psychiatric Association, and the Australasian Epidemiological Association. As senior editor, she authored chapters on substance use disorders for the New Zealand Mental Health Survey report.

Specializing in psychiatric epidemiology and survey methods, Wells has advanced understanding of mental health prevalence, comorbidity, treatment barriers, and substance use. Key publications include "Cross-national epidemiology of major depression and bipolar disorder" (JAMA, 1996), "Prevalence and correlates of bipolar spectrum disorder in the world mental health survey initiative" (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2011), "Use of mental health services for anxiety, mood, and substance disorders in 17 countries in the WHO world mental health surveys" (The Lancet, 2007), "Barriers to mental health treatment: results from the WHO World Mental Health surveys" (Psychological Medicine, 2014), and "Toward a global view of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use: findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys" (PLoS Medicine, 2008). Recent works encompass alcohol use transitions (Alcohol & Alcoholism, 2019) and sexual orientation prevalence (Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2017). Her contributions underpin national and international mental health research.