This Unit aims to improve the mental health of individuals and communities.

It does this through clinical duties, quality training and advanced research, and the accompanying dissemination of evidence-based health information to consumers, carers and service-providers and decision-makers.

Research areas

Our research aims for a better understanding of mental health from a holistic perspective in:

• Psychiatric epidemiology
• Cross-cultural psychiatry and Aboriginal mental health
• Primary-care Psychiatry and liaison activities with general practice
• Mental health service evaluation
• Community psychiatry, including remote and rural mental health
• Psychopathology of trauma and mental health of migrants and refugees
• International mental health, which is supported by committed associations with the World Psychiatric Association, World Health Organization and a range of other international institutions.

Projects

Some of our current research projects:

• Continuity of life and evaluation of a psychiatric rehabilitation program
  
• Social rituals and mental health
  
• HealthRight: Promoting physical health for mental health
  
• Metabolic monitoring of patients with mental illness

Other projects and research conducted by the group

• Training in methods and instruments suitable for evaluation of community psychiatric rehabilitation programs in Western Australia
• Survey of metabolic monitoring of patients with mental illness: Fremantle Hospital mental health staff
• Development and evaluation of the telepsychiatry educational program on diagnosis, assessment and management of mental disorders
• Effects of aromatherapy inhalation on anxiety and depression and weight regain in obesity
• Evaluating the mental health of adult refugee migrants recently arrived in Western Australia
• Evaluation of the effectiveness of a collaborative specialist Early Intervention in Psychosis Service model in a real world setting
• Development of a culturally appropriate approach to Aboriginal mental health problems
• Cross-cultural adaptation of the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN)
• An anthropological approach to psychotic phenomena in African-Australians
• Assessing the burden of mental illness in rural Australia
• Somatoform disorders in Australia: prevalence, comorbidity, disability and pathways to care
• Genetic epidemiology of personality traits and vulnerability factors in mental disorders
• Physical health aspects of chronic and severe mental disorders
• Social functioning and Continuity of Life in patients with chronic mental disorders
• Psychosocial health of conflict affected populations
• WHO/WFN survey of neurological services
• WHO international study of schizophrenia
• WHO report on neurological disorders in a global public health perspective
• WHO international study of somatoform disorders