Dr Kyli Hedrick

Dr Kyli Hedrick is a practising psychologist; a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the College of Sport, Health, and Engineering; and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne. Her practice, research, and teaching interests lie at the intersection of health and human rights. Kyli's PhD examined the epidemiology of self-harm among asylum seekers in both detained and community-based populations.

In addition to working as a specialist trauma counsellor at the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (Foundation House) for a period of 5 years, Kyli has conducted independent mental health assessments and provided psychological reports for asylum seekers medically transferred to Australia from offshore immigration detention. She is also the Founder and Director of a small private psychology practice in Melbourne's inner west for people from immigrant, asylum seeking and refugee backgrounds.

During 2022-2023, Kyli spent 12 months as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Uppsala University, Sweden - part of the Nordic Refugee Determination: Advancing Science in Migration Law (NordASIL) project. Kyli has published and presented her research findings relating to asylum seeker and refugee mental health, as well as the psychology of justice, in several international peer-reviewed journals, and at local, national, and international conferences.

Her findings relating to self-harm among detained asylum seekers have been widely cited in policy documents and submissions to State, National, and International Inquiries (e.g., the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System, The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the WHO's Country Implementation Guide on Addressing the Health Challenges in Immigration Detention, and Alternatives to Detention, and the Phoenix Australia Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Acute Stress Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and Complex PTSD).

In addition to roles in clinical practice, policy, and research, Kyli has worked as a psychology, counselling, and criminology lecturer at universities in both Australia and Scandinavia for over 15 years.