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The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers have been awarded more than $10 million in research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, and mental disorders) arise in adolescence but are mostly framed as relevant to health in adulthood; little is known about the relationship between co-occurring NCD risks and mental wellbeing in young people.
Psychological distress in the early postpartum period can have long-lasting deleterious effects on a mother's well-being and negatively affect her infant's development. Intervention approaches based in contemplative practices such as mindfulness and loving-kindness and compassion are intended to alleviate distress and cultivate well-being and can be delivered effectively as digital mental health interventions.
The reciprocal relationship between psychiatric and substance use disorders is well-known, yet it remains largely unknown whether mental health morbidity causally leads to addictive behaviours. This paper utilises a fixed effects instrumental variables model, which is identified by time-varying sources of plausibly exogenous variations in mental health, and a nationally representative panel dataset from Australia to present robust evidence on the causal impact of mental distress on cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking behaviours.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Aboriginal) people are overrepresented in Australian prisons, where they experience complex health needs. A model of care was designed to respond to the broad needs of the Aboriginal prisoner population within the nine adult prisons across South Australia. The purpose of this paper is to describe the methods and findings of the Model of Care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Prisoner Health and Wellbeing for South Australia.
Approximately 8% of all children experience developmental and mental health conditions. Similarities in characteristics across neurodevelopmental conditions-such as difficulties in communication and language, social interaction, motor coordination, attention, activity regulation, behavior, mood, and sleep-make it challenging to attribute these characteristics exclusively to specific diagnoses and assessments. The purpose of this study was to identify symptomatic domains across neurodevelopmental conditions in children and to explore dimension reduction for transdiagnostic assessment.
Young men aged 18-25 years are at disproportionately increased risk for gambling problems compared to their older or female counterparts. The unique mechanisms that precipitate these problems in this group remain unclear. Data from the largest longitudinal cohort study on Australian men's health (the Ten to Men Study) were used to identify the psychosocial, health-related, and gambling-related behavioral predictors of problem gambling severity in 265 young men aged 18-25 years. Hierarchical multiple ordinal logistic regression analyses found these predictors to explain a moderate proportion of variance in problem gambling severity.
Stigma and self-stigma reduce self-esteem and increase hopelessness and suicidality. While psychotic disorders are widely recognized as the most stigmatizing of all mental health disorders, there is a dearth of research investigating how stigma and self-stigma are experienced by young people at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis.
The objective of this scoping review is to understand the nature of the published evidence on housing suitability, affordability, insecurity, and homelessness in relation to physical and mental health, domestic violence, and health service use among Indigenous people in high-income countries.
There are 117.3 million people forcibly displaced because of war, conflict and natural disasters: 40% are children. With growing numbers, many high-income countries have adopted or are considering increasingly restrictive policies of immigration detention. Research on the impact of detention on mental health has focused on adults, although recent studies report on children.