Youth mental health and technology
About our research
There is a great need to change the way in which clinical care is delivered to young people with emerging mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, other mood disorders and psychosis. Specialised clinical assessment is required and treatment systems need to be much more customized to the individual’s unique needs. The Youth Mental Health and Technology Team, led by Professor Ian Hickie, puts young people at the centre of their own care. We partner with health services to develop innovative treatments for those aged 12-25 with emerging mental health disorders.
Our extensive collaborations with health service providers, industry, government, philanthropic and research organisations enable us to quickly and effectively translate our research findings into large-scale health system innovations and mental health policy reform, facilitating continuous improvements to mental health services for the benefit of young people in Australia.
Current research projects
We are developing next generation clinical and systems-based decision support tools, utilising participatory systems modelling approaches. We harness data science methods and innovation from across disciplines in order to achieve advances in the mental health and mental wealth of young people. |
Research programs
- YOUTHe, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence (CRE): Suicidal thoughts and behaviours remain a major determinant of premature death and ongoing disability among young Australians. This CRE is focused on evaluating and implementing a new national and coordinated system to enhance proactive and responsive health services management of suicidal thoughts and behaviours among young people. Additionally, it focuses on providing new tools to guide resource allocation and deliver evidence based, regionally-specific strategies.
- Computer Simulation and Advanced Research Technologies (CSART): In collaboration with Fondation Botnar, this program seeks to deliver an integrated decision analysis, monitoring and evaluation infrastructure to support more effective and responsive child and youth mental health systems in Columbia.
- Right Care, First Time, Where You Live (BHP Foundation): Place-based, inclusive mental healthcare design empowers communities to respond to and predict the needs of their young people. A partnership to see young people back to school, back to work, and thriving in their communities.
Research lead
A/Prof Jo-Ann Occhipinti
National COVID mental health systems modelling
- Beyond tinkering with the status quo (pdf, 2MB) [October 2021]
- Closing the Gender Gap in Mental Health (pdf, 2MB) [April 2021]
- A briefing note on revised BMC systems modelling (pdf, 414KB) [20 April 2021]
- Road to Recovery Part 2 - Investing in Australia's Mental Wealth (pdf, 384KB)
This paper was widely referenced following A/Prof Jo-An Atkinson’s address to the National Press Club lunch. [Sept 2020]
- Revision of estimates based on revised RBA forecasts (pdf, 610KB)
An update to “Road to Recovery”, the first national model of the impact of COVID-19. The update was based on RBA projections released on 7th August 2020. [August 2020]
- Road to Recovery (pdf, 1.5MB)
The first national model of mental health and suicide prevention. Uncovering the road to recovery of our mental health and wellbeing using systems modelling and simulation. [July 2020]
- Mitigating the Shadow Pandemic - Victori (pdf, 846KB)
Systems modelling and simulation of strategies to mitigate the ‘shadow pandemic’ of mental ill-health in Victoria [November 2020]
Regional mental health systems modelling reports
- Investing for Impact Despite Uncertaint (pdf, 1.9MB) [May 2021]
- NSW Primary Health Network modelling result (pdf, 500KB)
Systems modelling and simulation of regional variation in the effectiveness of suicide prevention strategies - preliminary report [15 Dec 2020] - Sounding the alarm, a post-COVID curve for suicide (pdf, 3.8MB)
Preliminary systems modelling results for the North Coast PHN region [May 2020] - Supplementary materials (pdf, 2.9MB)
(North Coast PHN model detailed) - Cost of productivity losses (pdf, 1.4MB)
Exploring the mental wealth of the northcoast Primary Health Network [May 2020] - Every life matter (pdf, 9.8MB) Pandemic response recommendations for four primary health networks: North Coast, Hunter New England, Western NSW and Greater Western Sydney [May 2020]
We are building sophisticated digital technology and linked information systems, developed through co-design, that permit a young person, their family and carers to be at the centre of clinical care and equal partners with clinicians in key treatment decisions. These systems also allow real-time information collection, to measure the performance of participating health organisations and the impact of new health initiatives allowing health care to be tracked and delivered in a sustainable manner.
Research Programs
- Best Care, First Time (Bupa Health Foundation): explores how health information technologies can support a genuine circle of care as young people go through the system across primary to specialist health care, and between public and private services.
- Explainable machine learning to improve youth mental health care, NHMRC Medical Research Future Fund,(MRFF): The project applies modern data science methods to build explainable and integrated machine learning models that can be utilised by health services to make real-time, data-informed clinical decisions in youth mental health care.
- Project Synergy (Department of Health): A series of research trials funded by the Commonwealth government to measure the effectiveness of health information technologies to support mental health care across the lifespan.
Research leads
- Best Care, First Time - Optimising youth mental health services using digital technologies (Word, 5.3MB) [June 2021]
Enabled by the Bupa Foundation, this report provides an overview of the current research project: 'Can digitally-supported care pathways deliver better care for young people with emerging mood or psychotic disorders?’
Developed following more than 10 years of research by our team, the BMC Youth Model promotes an enhanced youth mental health model of care. It incorporates evidence-based processes, including measurement-based care and routine outcome monitoring. This model explicitly aims to prevent progression to more complex and severe forms of illness, and change trajectories for young people.
Research programs
- Youth Mental Health & Technology Program (Future Generation Global): This model of care has been translated into a deployable education and training package, and is most effective when coupled and implemented with digital technology. The training package is endorsed as a Continuing Professional Development activity for psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, and occupational therapists. For more information, visit our Engagement Hub site.
- Design and implementation of clinical care models (Philanthropic family foundation donors): The Brain and Mind Centre Youth Model is underpinned by longitudinal tracking and characterisation of large cohorts of young people. This has enabled us to optimise and develop evidence-based, innovative models of care for the treatment of youth anxiety, depression and other youth mental health issues.
Research leads
Together with Monash University, the National Institute of Mental Health and international collaborators, our team is leading key research into abnormalities in the body clock as an underlying cause of mood disorders. While abnormal sleep-wake patterns are commonly reported in mood disorders, it is currently unclear how disruption of the circadian body clock contributes to the development and persistence of these mental illnesses, and how correcting this can improve outcomes.
Research Programs
- Effects of adjunctive brexpiprazole on sleep-wake and circadian parameters in youth with depressive syndromes (Lundbeck Australia): This project seeks to determine if changes in depressive symptoms following adjunctive brexpiprazole treatment are associated with changes in sleep-wake cycle or circadian parameters in young people with depressive syndromes.
Research leads
Dr Joanne Carpenter, Dr Jacob Crouse
This Stream is focussed on supporting effective policymaking to develop healthier, wealthier and more equitable communities.
25 years of national and state mental health plans and policies have failed to deliver fully accessible, safe, quality mental health care. This research takes an innovative approach to broaden the mental health ecosystem, encompassing both health and non-health sectors, Governments, business and civil society. The aim is to help investment in best value policies and models of care.
To achieve this goal, our Stream takes an inter-disciplinary research approach from economics, system science and implementation science. We combine a ‘system approach’ to provide the lens to understand the systemic drivers of mental health, a ‘societal economic perspective’ to value policy investments (health, economic, and economic impacts), and a ‘place-based implementation’ approach that supports the development of best-value and equitable policy investments that can be tailored for local implementation.
We focus on three key questions:
- ‘What to do?’ -The allocation of resources to the best value policies
- ‘How to do it better?’ Identifying more efficient models of implementation, and;
- ‘For whom?’ Considering both population-wide and targeted policy interventions, with an emphasis on reducing inequities.
Reports
Better Managing Complex Mental Illness (pdf, 474KB)
Redesigning primary mental health care for enhanced access, equity and quality (pdf, 1.3MB) (August 2023)
On the Right Track from the Start (pdf, 2.3MB) (May 2023)
Research leads
In collaboration with Westmead Medical Research Institute and St Vincent’s Private Hospital, we lead clinical trials aimed at developing standardised metabolic screening protocols, assessments and novel immune therapies for atypical mood and psychotic disorders.
Research Programs
- Neurobiology Youth Follow-up Study: Standardised follow-up suggests that more sophisticated treatment strategies may be required to achieve significant and sustained functional improvements. In this program, we are establishing a new longitudinal tracking study that will establish immune and metabolic profiles to enhance personalised care, at scale for young people.
Research leads
The research of our multidisciplinary team sits at the unique intersection of neuroscience and cultural anthropology. We seek to bring together the scientific principles that underpin development in the first five years of life with cultural practices and values to strengthen relationships between young children and their parents, extended families and communities and to foster positive connections with culture.
Research programs
- Thrive by Five: In partnership with the Minderoo Foundation, this project seeks to co-design, develop, implement, and evaluate the international Thrive by Five app. This project will run over three years (2021-2024) and will see the app implemented in at least 30 countries. The content of the app presents users with scientific information about their child’s development in the early years coupled with activities that parents, extended family, or trusted members of the community can engage in with the child to support their socioemotional and cognitive development. The app content takes into account the cultural context of each country and is actively tested and refined by local subject matter experts, parents and caregivers prior to implementation. An evaluation study will be conducted in each country to assess the impact of the Thrive by Five initiative on parenting confidence, parenting knowledge, and parenting practices as well as in relation to the connections between young children and their parents, extended family and community.
Research leads
The Brain & Mind Centre’s Lived Experience Research Stream is focused on embedding the voices of young people (aged 12 to 30) with lived experience of mental illness in all stages of research. The stream supports young people to contribute to research projects in various capacities including as members of a Lived Experience Working Group (LEWG), who consult on existing projects, and as members of the research team, who co-design and lead independent research projects. Overall, the purpose of this stream is to create an evidence base regarding the impact of lived experience on the quality and translatability of health research, and to establish gold-standard procedures for the inclusion of lived experience voices in research.
Research Leads
Key publications
Combine economic, social and medical data to forecast need and design services to address the growing crisis.
Authors: Jo-An Occhipinti , Adam Skinner , P. Murali Doraiswamy , Cameron Fox , Helen Herrman , Shekhar Saxena , Elisha London , Yun Ju Christine Song & Ian B. Hickie
26 September, 2021
Authors: Ian B Hickie, Tracey A Davenport, Jane M Burns, Alyssa C Milton, Laura Ospina‐Pinillos, Lisa Whittle, Cristina S Ricci, Larisa T McLoughlin, John Mendoza Shane P Cross, Sarah E Piper, Frank Iorfino, Haley M LaMonica
Date: 06 October 2019
Authors: Frank Iorfino, Elizabeth M. Scott, Joanne S. Carpenter, Shane P. Cross, Daniel F. Hermens, Madhura Killedar, Alissa Nichles, Natalia Zmicerevska, Django White, Adam J. Guastella, Jan Scott, Patrick D. McGorry, Ian B. Hickie.
Date: August, 2019
Authors: Jo-An Atkinson, Andrew Page, Mark Heffernan, Geoff McDonnell, Ante Prodan, Bill Campos, Graham Meadows, Ian B Hickie.
Date: December 2018
Authors: Joanne S. Carpenter, Rébecca Robillard, Daniel F. Hermens, Sharon L. Naismith, Christopher Gordon, Elizabeth M. Scott, Ian B. Hickie
Date: January 2017
Authors: Brittany L. Mitchell, Adrian I. Campos, Miguel E. Rentería, Richard Parker, Lenore Sullivan, Kerrie McAloney, Baptiste Couvy-Duchesne, Sarah E. Medland, Nathan A. Gillespie, Jan Scott, Brendan P. Zietsch, Penelope A. Lind, Nicholas G. Martin and Ian B. Hickie.
Date: June 2019
Our Team
- Professor Ian Hickie | NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and Co-Director, Health and Policy, Brain and Mind Centre
- Professor Markus Leweke | Chair in Youth Depression Studies
- Dr Sebastian Rosenberg | Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Policy Brain & Mind Centre
- Dr Christine Song | Research Operations Manager
- Jacqueline Hutcheon | Executive Assistant to Professor Ian Hickie
Research teams
- Associate Professor Jo-An Occhipinti | Head, Systems Modeling, Simulation & Data Science; Youth Mental Health and Technology; Co-Director, Mental Wealth Initiative, Brain and Mind Centre
- Grace Lee | Evaluation Research Manager
- Nicholas Ho | Senior Data Scientist
- Dr Catherine Vacher | Evaluation Systems Modeller
- Dr Adam Skinner | Senior Research Fellow
- Emily Selmon | Dissemination & Engagement Manager
- Kristen Tran | Mental Wealth Initiative Postdoctoral Research Associate
- Sam Huntley | Implementation & Engagement Manager
- Paul Crosland | Senior Research Fellow
- Dr Ante Prodan | Research Affiliate
- Andrea Natsky | Postdoctoral Health & Economics Research Fellow
- Raphael Gunawan Hasudungan | Economist
- Dr Hossein Hosseini | Systems Modelling Research Fellow
- Josephine Brogden | Digital Navigator & Lived Experience Researcher
- Sarah Piper | Senior Clinical Research Officer
- Alexis Hutcheon | Lived Experience Researcher & Digital Navigator
- Sabuj Mistry | Senior Research Officer
- Isabel Li | Biostatistics Postdoctoral Research Associate
- Simon Chiu | Systems Modeller
- Alexis Hutcheon | Lived Experience Researcher and Digital Navigator
- Samuel Hockey | Lived Experience Researcher
- Josephine Brogden | Digital Navigator & Lived Experience Researcher
- Carla Gorban | Digital Navigator & Lived Experience Researcher
- Zsofi de Haan | Digital Navigator & Lived Experience Researcher
- Dr Hayley LaMonica | Senior Research Fellow
- Dr Victoria Loblay | Research Fellow
- Adam Yoon | Research Assistant
- Dr Mafruha Alam | Research Fellow
- Dr Mahalakshmi Ekambareshwar | Research Fellow
- Dr Gabrielle Hindmarsh | Research Fellow
- Dr Maddie Sweeney-Nash | Postdoctoral Research Associate
- Dr Adam Poulsen | Research Fellow
- Iqthyer Zahed | Research Officer
- Dr Aila Naderbagi | Research Officer
- Chloe Wilson | Postdoctoral Research Associate
- Olivia Iannelli | Research Manager
- Qaisar Khan | Evaluation Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Dr Frank Iorfino | Senior Research Fellow
- Matthew Varidel | Senior Research Data Scientist
- Mathew Richards | Research Assistant
- Dr Rafa De Oliveira | Research Fellow
- William Capon | Research Officer
- Kirill Glavatskyy | Senior Research Data Scientist
- Dr Ante Prodan | Research Affiliate
- Alison Crowley | Implementation Officer
- Dr Sarah McKenna | Research Fellow
- Min Chong | Research Assistant
- Carla Gorban | Digital Navigator and Lived Experience Researcher
- Dr Jacob Crouse | Research Fellow
- Associate Professor Elizabeth Scott | Principal Research Fellow
- Associate Professor Dagmar Koethe | Principal Research Fellow
- Dr Shin Ho Park | Research Data Scientist
- Alissa Nichles | Senior Clinical Research Officer|
- Natalia Zmicerevska | Senior Clinical Research Officer
- Timothy Wong | Research Assistant
- Minji Park | Research Assistant
- Dr Joanne Carpenter | Research Fellow
- Daniel Froggart | Research Assistant
- Mirim Shin | Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Neurobiology
- Alice Lo | Senior Clinical Research Officer
- Connie Janiszewski | Research Assistant
- Nathan Bradshaw | Project Manager
- Elizabeth Phung | Research Assistant
- Emiliana Tonini | Sleep & Mental Health Postdoctoral Research Associate
- Dr Maddie Sweeney-Nash | Postdoctoral Research Associate
- Grace Lee
- Paul Crosland
- Dr Catherine McHugh
- Alexander Bradley Tavevski-Beckwith
- Min Chong
- Mujahid Torwali
- William Capon