Early Neurodevelopment and Mental Health

The period from conception to age 5 is a critical window to act to prevent mental illness and ensure that all children can achieve optimal developmental outcomes.

By examining and acting on modifiable early life mechanisms of risk and resilience, our aim is to improve children’s long-term mental health trajectories and neurodevelopment.

Our Key Objectives

Understanding the origins of neurodevelopmental risk and resilience

It is vital that we develop a deeper understanding of the interactions between the biological and psychosocial mechanisms implicated in mental health and illness in order to promote positive mental health and neurodevelopment, and to improve identification, prevention, and management of adverse outcomes. Our research aims to further our understanding of the biological pathways implicated in neurodevelopment and mental health vulnerability and resilience, highlighting opportunities for identification of risk, as well as generating potential targets for early intervention programs.

Developing and testing prevention and pre-emptive intervention approaches to reduce the impact of developmental vulnerability and prevent childhood mental illness

This involves working with community members and partners to develop novel intervention approaches, test their feasibility and efficacy, and understand the barriers and facilitators for implementation at the population level. It is our strong belief that effective intervention development is grounded in consumer involvement and community partnership, and we seek to ensure that all work undertaken by the team is co-developed with members of the communities we aim to support.

Promote more equitable outcomes in early childhood neurodevelopment and mental health

Social disadvantage is a global public health issue. There is a marked social gradient in early childhood development, with socially disadvantaged children twice as likely to be developmentally vulnerable at school entry. This, in turn, leads to poorer social-emotional and mental health outcomes in later life that can perpetuate cycles of disadvantage. Our team’s work aims to understand how environments marked by disadvantage influence developmental risk and resilience. Additionally, our uses economic frameworks to determine the return-on-investment of early identification and intervention approaches and to understand how best to conceptualise and achieve equity in child health.

Our Partners

We partner with the Institute for Innovation in Developmental Sciences at Northwestern University, as well as a range of other national and international collaborators. Locally, we work closely with key stakeholders in early child development, including Child and Adolescent Health Services – Community Health, Ngala, Anglicare, and the Department of Communities.