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The Early Neurodevelopment and Mental Health team is focused on preventing childhood mental illness and optimising children’s development and wellbeing in the first years of their life. We are interested in understanding and identifying the factors that contribute to difficulties in mental health and development, as well as developing cost-effective prevention and early intervention approaches for addressing developmental needs and promoting resilience.

News & Events

We are excited to introduce ten trailblazing researchers who will be taking to the stage this February to pitch their bold and innovative ideas to our philanthropic community.

News & Events

The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers set out on a worldwide search to find out all they could about Rett syndrome, establishing databases and creating awareness.

Research

Young men aged 18-25 years are at disproportionately increased risk for gambling problems compared to their older or female counterparts. The unique mechanisms that precipitate these problems in this group remain unclear. Data from the largest longitudinal cohort study on Australian men's health (the Ten to Men Study) were used to identify the psychosocial, health-related, and gambling-related behavioral predictors of problem gambling severity in 265 young men aged 18-25 years. Hierarchical multiple ordinal logistic regression analyses found these predictors to explain a moderate proportion of variance in problem gambling severity. 

Research

Pregnancy and the postnatal period can be a time of increased psychological distress, which can be detrimental to both the mother and the developing child. Digital interventions are cost-effective and accessible tools to support positive mental health in women during the perinatal period.

Research

Young adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual and other diverse genders and sexualities (LGBTQIA+) are more likely to experience mental health difficulties and are at significantly elevated risk of substance abuse, self-harm and suicide, relative to their heterosexual, endosex and cisgender peers. There is a need for effective mental health interventions for LGBTQIA+ young adults. Mindful Self-Compassion training is a promising approach; among LGBTQIA+ individuals, self-compassion accounts for more variation in mental health outcomes than bullying, victimization, and adverse childhood experiences combined. Furthermore, LGBTQIA+ individuals with high self-compassion report more positive identity and happiness, less self-stigma, and lower suicidality than those with low self-compassion.

Research

We conducted an open randomized controlled trial in Papua New Guinea to compare safety, immunogenicity and priming for memory of 7-valent PCV (PCV7) given in...

Research

Children with birth defects experience higher rates of hospitalisation for ALRIs before age 2 years than children with no birth defects.

Research

In the 1990s pneumonia hospitalisation rates in Western Australia (WA) were 13 times higher in Indigenous children than in non-Indigenous children...

Research

Human rhinovirus (HRV) species C (HRV-C) have been associated with frequent and severe acute lower respiratory infections and asthma in hospitalized children.