Current Mental Health First Aid Research Projects
First aid training for parents of teenagers
A large randomised controlled trial is being carried out to find out if providing Mental Health First Aid training to parents when their child is in early adolescence has a long-term benefit to their relationship with their child and to the child’s mental health. Mental health first aid training is being compared to Red Cross first aid training as a control. See www.tpot.net.au
Development and evaluation of teen Mental Health First Aid
The teen Mental Health First Aid Program (teen MHFA) is a new training course, currently in development, that will be designed for adolescents aged between 16 and 18 years, to be delivered in school classrooms or to groups or clubs of between 15-30 students. In early 2012 we plan to evaluate the program by running it in a few Victorian Secondary schools and getting feedback from students and teachers. Once the evaluation is complete and the materials have been finalised, we will launch the program nationally. More information.
Mental Health Literacy Team Research Projects
Parenting strategies
Guidelines are being produced for what parents can do to reduce the risk of alcohol misuse, depression and anxiety disorders in their adolescent children. Based on these guidelines, a web-based intervention has been developed for preventing alcohol misuse (www.parentingstrategies.net) and is being extended to cover prevention of depression and anxiety problems.
Mindwise
Mindwise is a large randomised trial to improve student and staff mental health at Victoria University. The trial aims to reduce the impact of depression, anxiety disorders and alcohol misuse, which are the major mental health problems in tertiary students. www.mindwise.org.au
Whatworks4u
There is very little controlled trial data on what interventions work for what mental health problems in young people. To fill this gap with some data, a website has been set up (www.WhatWorks4U.org) to allow young people who have had mental health problems to rate the effectiveness of interventions they have tried. The website covers a wide range of possible interventions and disorders.
National surveys of mental health literacy and stigma
Two large national surveys of the Australian public have been completed. One involved 6000 adults aged 15+ years and the other 3000 young people aged 15-18 years. The data will be published progressively over the next few years.
Bipolar Caregivers
Guidelines for caregivers of people with bipolar disorder have been produced from the consensus of clinicians, consumer advocates and caregiver advocates. These guidelines have been used as the basis for a caregiver website: www.bipolarcaregivers.org. Research is being carried out on the usefulness of the guidelines and website to caregivers and consumers.
Moodmemos
This study is researching whether an email-based mental health promotion campaign can help improve mild depression symptoms and prevent the development of major depression. The goal is to help reduce the population burden of depression with an intervention that can be widely disseminated at low cost. www.moodmemos.com
What workplaces can do to assist staff with depression or anxiety disorders return to work
The aim of the project is to develop guidelines for organisations on how to reduce the risk for relapse and facilitate a successful return to work for employees following an episode of depression, anxiety or a related disorder. This will be done by reviewing the evidence on strategies for this and assessing expert consensus on which strategies are appropriate. The strategies will be published as a set of guidelines and made freely available to organisations.