Rate My Professor Richard Mooney

Richard Mooney serves as the Clinical Group Leader for Mental Health and Well-being at the University of Otago Student Health Services. A Registered Mental Health Nurse originally from and trained in England, he relocated to New Zealand in 2004. Over the course of his career, Mooney has worked extensively in mental health settings in both the United Kingdom and New Zealand, encompassing acute inpatient care, community mental health teams, crisis teams, and child and adolescent mental health services. He joined Student Health Services in 2017, where he conducts initial assessments, provides crisis resolution, delivers brief interventions, and facilitates referrals to appropriate support for students.

Leading a team of about 16 clinicians, Mooney oversees an integrated service model that offers same-day appointments with no waitlists or entry criteria for self-referrals. The approach emphasizes rapid assessment, risk evaluation, and collaborative treatment planning, utilizing a brief-intervention framework of up to six talking therapy sessions to address prevalent student issues including stress, anxiety, depression, low mood, relationship difficulties, substance use, homesickness, adjustment challenges, family matters, trauma, and eating concerns. Mooney advocates for early intervention, stating that rapid access to high-quality mental health services improves outcomes. His team received the Disability Information and Support Appreciation Award in 2019 for providing outstanding, timely advice and support to students and staff. Additionally, Mooney co-presented at the 2019 ANZSSA Conference on the University of Otago's new model of student mental health service provision, titled 'The times they are a changing.' He has actively promoted mental health awareness through initiatives like World University Mental Health Day, encouraging open conversations to normalize and destigmatize the topic, and highlighting elevated risks among university students due to academic pressures, newfound independence, financial stressors, and broader societal factors such as the Covid pandemic and climate concerns.