Australian Rotary Health

Dr Helen Stain

National competitive grant awards have allowed her to develop a program of child, youth and family mental health research with a particular focus on ultra high risk (UHR) for psychotic disorders. In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and based on the EDIE model from the UK, she has recently completed an RCT for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy aimed to prevent the onset of psychosis in young people. Her clinical research is underpinned by her senior clinical appointment with the area health service and by her development of research within the clinical services. Helen and colleagues are now undertaking a multisite study of predictors of onset of psychosis in urban and rural youth at risk for psychosis. In addition, recently she has brought together a team of Australian and UK researchers to conduct an RCT of telephone delivered intervention for rural disengaged youth.

She is extending the access to interventions for rural youth and the general community through a focused development of e-health delivered health promotion, prevention and early interventions in her research program. Her strong commitment to improving the mental health of young people including those at risk of developing psychosis is evident through her own research program, international collaborations, clinical practice and support for the career development of new researchers.

SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
Improving social engagement of rural ‘at risk’ youth: A randomised effectiveness trial of a telephone delivered Cognitive and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy intervention

Our study arises from concern over the long term outcomes for youth who experience a significant decline in functioning that impacts on school, vocational training or employment and therefore community participation and social inclusion. Recent research in this field has focussed on youth at ultra high risk (UHR) for psychosis and there is considerable evidence from research in adult schizophrenia for reduced community participation. While it is critical to identify interventions to increase the ability for UHR youth to engage at an instrumental and social level in the community, there are many youth who experience a similar disengagement and are therefore vulnerable to similar long term detrimental outcomes. The Australian government has sought to address the problem for such youth through the provision of linkage services to link them back in to school, training or employment. However these services often fail to address the youth’s impoverished ability to engage with others and therefore the degree to which they can actually participate with the linkage services. Many of these youth have the potential to become marginalised youth and are therefore at greatest mental health risk as their non presence in education or employment reduces the likelihood of exposure to health promotion programs such as suicide prevention or early intervention.

It is proposed that the effectiveness of linkage services to re-engage youth in education and employment could be enhanced by targeting the skills necessary for social engagement by youth. The study is a single blind RCT with both intervention and assessment conducted by telephone on a weekly basis for three months to a maximum of 12 sessions.