Dr Pamela Marsh
Macquarie University, NSW
Mental Health Research 2009
Dr Marsh is Research Fellow at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney. Her current research focus is on developing treatment programs to help improve the social functioning and lives of people with schizophrenia. Pamela completed her PhD on visual processing of emotional facial expressions in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and first-episode schizophrenia (FES) in 2006 at which time she then joined the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS) to work on a project investigating the remediation of facial emotion perception in psychotic disorders.
Dr Marsh’s research achievements are unique because she is a mental health consumer/researcher with advocacy training; this is a rare combination and it is a major motivating factor in shaping Dr Marsh’s research interests. She is registered as a consumer representative (a spokesperson for people being treated for a mental illness) with the Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW (SFNSW) and has worked in the Consumer Network in NSW.
Dr Marsh’s profile and reputation amongst consumers and clinicians makes her ideally placed to pursue her research aims to develop remediation programs that will help to alleviate the social functioning impairments in schizophrenia. While working on psychiatric wards as an advocate she gained an invaluable and privileged insight into the everyday difficulties experienced by individuals with schizophrenia and the toll that this illness takes on individuals and their families. Working at a grass roots level in clinical settings prompted Dr Marsh to focus her research on designing and implementing theoretically-informed treatments to improve social functioning impairments that are not stigmatizing, are enjoyable and motivating, and can fit realistically into the everyday lives of people with schizophrenia.
SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT:
Remediation of mental-state reasoning and emotion recognition in schizophrenia: Theoretical and clinical implications.
Poor functioning in social activities, one of the most debilitating aspects of schizophrenia, is a core feature of this illness. Poor social functioning reinforces social isolation due to difficulties with communicating and understanding other people’s perspectives, as well as one’s own. It may also increase the risk of disease and death.
Improving social disability in schizophrenia is a high research priority world-wide, driven by patients’ reports that it is one of their greatest unmet needs.
Approximately 66% of people with schizophrenia cannot fulfil basic social roles like marriage, parenting and work. Less than 33% can work regularly and 10.2% continue to show poor social functioning even while in remission from clinical symptoms.
Research suggests that impaired social cognition underlies poor social functioning. Social cognition is the mental operation that allows humans to think about and form impressions about other people in social interactions. Put simply it is people being able to think about other people.
Dr Marsh’s study is examining the effects of two targeted social cognitive training programs on social functioning in people with schizophrenia:
1. an Emotion Recognition Training program (ERT) and
2. a Mental State Reasoning Training program (MSRT) – designed to improve general understanding of other people's thoughts and feelings
These targeted treatments will be compared to:
1. a Treatment As Usual (TAU) group and
2. a Social-Activities treatment control group (SAS)
Research shows that the impairment of selective social-cognitive abilities i.e. understanding other people's facial expressions, thoughts, and feelings, contributes independently to social disability in schizophrenia.
In this study Dr Marsh will investigate the effects of ERT and MSRT separately to gain a better understanding of the independent contributions of these two aspects of social cognition on social functioning in schizophrenia.