Many mental health conditions have a long evolutionary trajectory, leading to various risks and an overall deterioration in functioning over time. However, diagnosing and treating mental illness in its early stages remains a significant challenge and a crucial area for improvement. One of the primary challenges lies in accurately differentiating between Early Psychosis and its ...
HER Centre
Amber’s Alert: Enhancing Diagnostic Accuracy & Treatment Planning in Mental Health
GOAL
$82,000
Australia > National / Multi-state > Metro and Regional
06/01/2024 > 30/06/2026
Field of Interest
- Health/wellbeing and medical research
- Individual/family services and support
Target Population
- People with a disability, illness or disease
- Young people (6-25)
HER Centre
At HER Centre Australia, our mission is to improve the lives of young girls and women living with mental ill-health. We aim to do this by developing innovative treatments and new services, underpinned by our world-class clinical research.
Our Health, Education and Research work is conducted collaboratively, co-designed and conducted by women with lived experience of mental ill-health as part of our multidisciplinary team. The education component of HER Centre Australia involves disseminating accurate and up-to-date information and delivering workshops, events and online courses for people with lived experience, their families, the general community, and mental health professionals.
HER Centre Australia teams have set up innovative clinical services for women including the Monash Alfred Women’s Mental Health Clinic and Australia’s first mental health hospital for women as part of Cabrini Health.
The reputation of HER Centre Australia has been fostered by the outstanding leadership of the Centre Director and founder, Professor Jayashri Kulkarni AM, its patient-centred research and clinical focus, and its unique collaborative structure. This dynamic and highly integrated research and clinical environment fosters innovative collaborations between leading clinicians and researchers from a range of disciplines including psychiatry, neuroscience, endocrinology, psychology and nursing.
Project Summary
Many mental health conditions have a long evolutionary trajectory, leading to various risks and an overall deterioration in functioning over time. However, diagnosing and treating mental illness in its early stages remains a significant challenge and a crucial area for improvement.
One of the primary challenges lies in accurately differentiating between Early Psychosis and its prodrome, Borderline Personality Disorder, complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Affective disorders. The overlapping symptoms and complex nature of these conditions make it difficult to provide an accurate diagnosis and determine the most effective treatment strategies.
To address the gap in timely and accurate diagnosis, we propose developing a diagnostic kit that includes revised scales and objective biological markers. This kit, called Amber’s Alert, aims to assist clinicians in general healthcare facilities including hospital Emergency Departments in accurately differentiating between these conditions. By incorporating updated assessment tools and objective markers, we can improve diagnostic accuracy and enhance treatment planning for women, men, trans and gender-diverse people with mental health conditions.
It is worth noting that current testing and diagnostic criteria often do not consider potential differences between genders in terms of early psychosis presentation and diagnosis, highlighting an area for further exploration and refinement in psychiatric assessment practices.
Project Outcomes
The objective of this project is to develop and validate a toolkit that will improve diagnostic acuity and thereby reduce the incidence of misdiagnosis in the early stages of the onset of a mental illness.
This project is very ambitious and while a definitive diagnostic toolkit is the long term goal, even a modest improvement in accuracy of diagnosis will have profound impacts on the lives of the people suffering with the illness and their family and loved ones. The expected outcome of this project is to have a toolkit that can be disseminated to mental health clinicians whose role is to determine the diagnosis of people presenting to their service.
The project will also generate data that will more broadly improve our understanding of different mental illnesses and how they are correlated with the objective tests and instruments that will make up the Amber's Alert Toolkit. In this way, the project will also generate data that can be used in subsequent related projects which will seek to refine and improve the toolkit over time.
Budget Breakdown
TOTAL BUDGET: $624,973
FUNDING
| Funding source | Amount |
|---|---|
| Amber's White Light, a sub-fund of ACF (confirmed) | $150,000 |
| Other philanthropic funds (confirmed) | $150,000 |
| HER Centre | $243,542 |
| Funding gap (unconfirmed) | $82,000 |
EXPENSES
| Expense item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Research Staffing costs | $263,540 |
| Research leadership | $56,571 |
| Direct research costs (Lab equipment, archiving, ethics, IT) | $61,320 |
| Project management and administration | $206,706 |
| Scientific communications & promotion | $36,836 |
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