Dr Kristin Laurens
University of NSW
Mental Health Research Grant 2011 and 2012
Dr. Kristin Laurens is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales, and also at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, UK (joint appointment). Kristin completed undergraduate studies in Australia before graduating from the University of British Columbia, Canada, with a Ph.D. (Neuroscience) in 2004.
Kristin conducts research in the area of developmental psychopathology using a variety of research methods, including epidemiology and brain imaging techniques. Kristin’s research aims to determine the biological and psychosocial processes that operate during childhood to determine health, well-being, and educational/occupational outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood. Her work seeks to inform the development of novel early intervention and prevention programmes for major mental illness, particularly schizophrenia and related disorders.
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.