2022 Growing Minds Australia Research Endorsement Fund
Imagine the scenario. You have been struggling at home with your son and daughter. When you ask for help around the house their response is always out of proportion to what you had asked. There are often disagreements and raised voices. There are arguments about the times they come home, chores, and school reports. You’re worried about what these heightened interactions mean, and you’re concerned about their safety, because sometimes things can get really get out of hand.
You turn to a local service to get support. You go on a waitlist, fill out questionnaires, waiting, worried the whole time about how things are going at home, noting the impact on your other kids. Your own stress levels get higher, meaning you yourself are more likely to react, when your child overreacts. You start ending up in arguments with your partner about what is happening with you and your child, especially when you ask your child to do something. You can feel all the tension building up in the house.
Finally, you get the family in the car, and go in to see a service worker for the booked appointment, to get help and sort this out for good. But there are barely two sessions that happen, and your child refuses to even get in the car to go to the next session. You call and cancel, embarrassed by this, and drop out of the service altogether, with things just getting worse and worse at home, with every week that passes.
This scenario describes one version of what it is to be a ‘non-responder’ in mental health treatment. The term ‘non-responder’ can also include not receiving help from drug treatment, even though the person keeps taking the medication. It can also include continuing to attend therapeutic support, and not having any change in the outcome measures for beneficial results from that specific support.
‘Non-responders’ are known to be present in child and youth mental health services, but little is known about whether there are common factors that characterise non-response, and what we can do to help. In our first rounds of awarding research funding for Growing Minds Australia supported by the Medical Research Future Fund, some of the best minds in child and youth mental health in Australia have come together to create an innovation pipeline, with a focus on what happens when non-response occurs in families receiving help for child and youth mental health challenges.
This research funding opportunity is part of the establishment of the Growing Minds Australia Clinical Trials Network. We’re offering grants of up to $100,000 to researchers who seek to innovate solutions for non-responder outcomes in child and youth mental health, and who can show us how their research fits into a clinical trials network. To apply for funding, you first need to become a Growing Minds Australia network member, here.
Note that the application close date has been extended to COB Friday 2 September 2022.
Documents for applications:
A. GMA Publications Policy 2022
B. GMA Policy Guidelines for Endorsement 2022
C. GMA Grant Application Form – 2022
D. GMA Grant Application Evaluation Form 2022
For more information please write to growing-minds-australia@sydney.edu.au.