Working with at risk youth – metabolic abnormalities in incarcerated youth

Summary

This is a study on the metabolic status of incarcerated adolescents who are on anti-psychotic medication.

Supervisor(s)

Professor Kate Steinbeck

Research Location

Westmead - Children's Hospital at Westmead Clinical School

Program Type

Masters/PHD

Synopsis

Metabolic abnormalities, and the Metabolic Syndrome develop frequently in people treated with psychotropic medications and people with the metabolic syndrome are three times more likely to suffer a serious cardiovascular event, and five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Justice Health established a robust program of metabolic monitoring, that was rolled out throughout all Adolescent Health Centres in 2008. This program recruits all young people commenced on psychotropic medication, and monitors them for side-effects at regular intervals. This study aims to follow prospectively the metabolic profile of all young people prescribed psychotropic medication over that time, and document the frequency of the metabolic syndrome and other metabolic abnormalities. Participants will be approximately 30% of the incarcerated population of young people over a year, and will amount to approximately 300 young people who will be monitored for a varying duration of time, depending upon their length of sentence and duration of treatment. This includes males and females (approximately 10% of the cohort), and ages ranging from 12 to 21 years, with a mean age of 16 years. The prevalence of outcomes would be described according to type and duration of medication, and would be stratified or adjusted according to age, gender, ethnicity, centre location and any other relevant associations or confounders. The analysis of data would be done on SPSS and SAS software.

Additional Information

This project is data analysis and would suit an Honour's project. The aim is to use the data to plan further studies, including interventions in this high risk population.

Keywords

adolescent, incarceration, metabolic syndrome, Obesity, anti-psychotic medication

Opportunity ID

The opportunity ID for this research opportunity is: 1266

Other opportunities with Professor Kate Steinbeck

• Puberty hormones and adolescent health and wellbeing
• Cross-sectional study of adolescent rural health on-line