Factors contributing to the capacity and capability of carers to care for children and young people in out-of-home care with complex mental health difficulties
This study will assess factors which impact on parental reflective capacity, parental stress and parental confidence at commencement of training for foster carers, kinship carers and residential workers. The children and young people that they care for are attending a specialist mental health service. Further research will examine training outcomes for carers.
Principal Investigator: Kathy Eadie
Mental health profile of children and young people in care with complex mental health needs
This study will assess the mental health profile of children and young people at the commencement of treatment at a specialist mental health service using the carer-rated Assessment Checklist measures (Assessment Checklist for Children/Adolescents), a measure specifically designed for the out-of-home care population. The measures assesses attachment style, trauma symptoms, anxiety symptoms, harmful sexual behaviours, food maintenance behaviours and self injury. The measures were completed by carers for 195 children and young people. Findings will be compared to other studies with similar cohorts. Further research will examine outcomes for children and young people.
Principal Investigator: Kathy Eadie
Do young people who make on-line threats differ from young people who make threats in person?
This research question will focus on all young people who were referred for a threat assessment and explore whether there are differences between young people who make threats exclusively on-line with those that make threats in person. This research will use multivariate models to determine whether case history can predict on-line versus in-person threats. Further, it will explore whether the mode of threat is associated with the level of threat predicted in the assessment. It is anticipated that this research will contribute to understanding how on-line threats may differ from in-person threats and inform responses to on-line threat behaviour.
Principal Investigator: Dr Chelsea Leach, Tasneem Hasan
Co-investigators: Ashley Heath, Carla Newcombe, Scott Harden, Laura Cobzaru, Jordana Hayes, Vinesh Gupta, Michelle Johnston, Amaris En-Hui Tok, Bruce Watt, Shannon Logan
Assessment of risk of violence in youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities
Typically, empirically validated tools such as the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) are used to assess the risk of violence in neurotypical youth. There is currently no validated tool for the assessment of risk of violence in child and youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This project is a review of available literature to ascertain how the risk of violence is currently assessed in adults and youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities and a case series to provide a practical example of violence risk assessment with currently available instruments, in order to add to the evidence base on the topic.
Principal Investigators: Dr Katherine Monahan (Senior Lecturer UQ) and Dr Brendan McGuire
PRE-EMPT “PREdiction of Early Mental Disorder and Preventive Treatment” Centre of Research Excellence
This project is led by Professor Barnaby Nelson, Orygen, Melbourne and is a partnership with researchers at Telethon Kids Institute (Associate Professor Ashleigh Lin), University of Adelaide (Dr Scott Clark), University of Queensland (Professor Christel Middeldorp), University of Groningen (Netherlands) (Professor Hanneke Wigman) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany) (Professor Nikolaos Koutsouleris). The CRE will deliver a program of work examining how mental illnesses develop, and identifying risk and protective factors. The UQ/CHQ CYMHS research group focuses on the role of genetic factors in the development and course of mental illnesses.
Investigators: Christel Middeldorp, Enda Byrne, and Naomi Wray
Improving outcomes in mental health. A longitudinal clinical study in children and their families
This project aims to increase knowledge on factors influencing the outcome of childhood and adolescent psychopathology and to improve outcomes by investigating treatment strategies for families in which both parents and children suffer from mental health symptoms.
In families with children referred for child and youth mental health symptoms, we will collect information on a broad variety of factors that may be related to treatment outcome, includingchildren’s and parental symptoms, cognitive functioning, family environment, leisure time activities and biological samples. We will carry out a trial to establish the effect of a parenting program that provide parents with tools to improve problem behavior in children and to cope with associated stressors. Families will be followed till at least 18 months after the first assessment. The results will show whether the parenting program is beneficial for both the parents and the child. They will also show which other factors also influence outcome, providing leads for other ways to improve treatment strategies.
Principal Investigators: Christel Middeldorp, Honey Heussler, Matthew Sanders and Professor Naomi Wray