Conference showcases MUDRIH-led research
Dr Melinda Goodyear took advantage of numerous opportunities to showcase MUDRIH-led research when she attended a recent international conference on families with parental mental health challenges.
As an emerging early career researcher in this field, Melinda contributed in various ways to the ‘Fourth International Conference on Families with Parental Mental Health Challenges: Addressing the Needs of the Whole Family’, held at Berkeley, California during April.
Melinda secured SRH funding to attend the conference, which she described as “the major conference for our research group and the major international conference for the research field addressing supports for families where a parent has a mental illness (the FaPMI/COPMI research fields).”
The conference was attended by most major researchers in this field and Melinda delivered two oral presentations outlining her work, including an invited presentation in a plenary of family recovery. She also chaired a conference session.
“My contributions to the conference had a wide reach across the research field, and aided in profiling MUDRIH and the School of Rural Health as leaders in the area of FaPMI/COPMI research,” Melinda said.
“Building on previous conference contributions, I was able to showcase the results of a two-year implementation project on implementing family interventions in mental health services, and clearly positioned our research team as world leaders in this newly emerging research field.
“These presentations highlighted the significant collaborative research partnerships formed with the service sector and the Bouverie Centre to address a major health priority area of mental illness.
“The plenary showcased a number of MUDRIH-led research projects completed over the last four years. The conference was also attended by clinical leaders in the field so there were additional benefits for the dissemination of this work clinically,” she said.
In her oral presentations, Melinda outlined data from several manuscripts; the first being on the implementation of the Let’s Talk Parenting Intervention in Australia (for submission in September 2014) and the second on the clinical perspectives of promoting family resilience where a parent has a mental illness (due to be submitted by December 2014).
The day before the conference began, Melinda also met with the Systems Group of the Prato FaPMI Research Collaboration, of which she is a member.
“I will soon complete an ethics application for a Delphi study which I will lead into ascertaining international implementation strategies for systems change to accommodate the needs of parents with a mental illness and their children in mental health services,” Melinda said.
“As part of this project, Monash will be collaborating with world leading researchers and clinicians, and will be assisted in the dissemination of the study through collaboration with the National COPMI initiative on this project.
“This project will significantly enhance knowledge transfer of our strategies which seek organisational change in the mental health sector to better meet the needs of families where a parent has a mental illness,” she said.
“I was also able to meet with a number of research collaborators who have agreed to partner on a transition to parenthood project for the upcoming strategic grant scheme.”