Dr Elizabeth Maloney
University of NSW
Mental Health Research 2011
Dr Elizabeth Maloney graduated from the University of New South Wales in 2004 with a Social Science degree and received her PhD in 2008 through the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre.
Dr Maloney currently holds a Post-doctoral Research Fellow position within the UNSW School of Psychiatry, and is involved in implementing a program of research in epidemiology and population health. Initially, this program of research involves using a NSW population cohort, to identify vulnerability and resilience factors, emerging from birth to 10 years of age, that relate to developmental functioning (social, emotional, behavioural, physical and cognitive functioning) and school achievement. In addition, the research will examine the health (physical and psychological) and wellbeing of parents and examine the relationship to developmental functioning among offspring.
Dr Maloney has extensive experience in recruiting and interviewing individuals with mental health problems and substance use disorders. Additionally, Dr Maloney has been involved in working with large datasets including the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, to examine the prevalence and predictors of substance use among parents and the associated impacts on children.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
Identifying targets and timing for early intervention: A NSW population record-linkage study to detect childhood indicators of risk for mental illness
The project will conduct inter-agency record linkage of routinely collected NSW population data to determine markers of childhood development that represent vulnerability to adult psychiatric illness. Record linkage will allow researchers to examine developmental functioning of children with parental history of depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder relative to children without parental history of psychiatric disorder.
Specifically, the study aims to:
1. Determine specific domains of childhood functioning that are developmentally impaired in children of parents with any psychiatric disorder;
2. Determine whether particular developmental impairments distinguish children of parents with different psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression);
3. Determine which combinations of developmental factors distinguish children at-risk of developing any mental disorder versus risk for specific disorders (e.g., are offspring with a parental history of schizophrenia more likely to display poor motor skills, and a lack of social development, compared to offspring with a parental history of depression).
In terms of size and scope, this is the first study of its kind to utilise a whole population approach: the child cohort will be defined as those children in NSW who completed the Australian Early Development Index in kindergarten in 2009 (i.e., ~87,000 children, representing 99.9% of this population). This cohort affords a unique opportunity to examine vulnerability and resilience mechanisms operating within a range of developmental domains (i.e., social, emotional, behavioural, cognitive, physical and academic) in association with genetic risk for psychiatric disorders of low prevalence like schizophrenia. Record linkage will be conducted under the auspices of the Centre for Health Record Linkage (CHeReL).
The use of innovative, anonymised record linkage methodologies to distinguish genetically-vulnerable offspring is both efficient and cost-effective, while minimising the potentially stigmatising effects of being prematurely labelled as “at-risk”, when many children will not go on to develop illness.