Mental Health Research Receives Funding Boost

Media release
Thursday 7 June 2007

Mental Health Research Receives Funding Boost

Mental Health research at the University of Otago, Christchurch has received a significant increase of nearly $8 million in this year’s Health Research Council funding round announced today.

The funding is for an extension of two large ongoing research programmes, and one new project. The Mental Health Clinical Research Programme led by the Dean of the Christchurch Campus, Professor Peter Joyce, has received a $3 million dollar plus extension. This programme is investigating genetics and depression, young people with bipolar disorder, and the treatment of eating disorders through psychotherapy.

The other programme extension grant goes to the long running Christchurch Health and Development Study led by Professor David Fergusson, the Canterbury Suicide Project led by Associate Professor Annette Beautrais and the Early Start Field Trial for families at risk.

The new project announced today is an innovative study of how best to treat people suffering from both alcoholism and severe depression through the use of anti-depressants and new anti-craving drugs. This is led by Professor Doug Sellman, the Director of the National Addiction Centre.

“The results reflect the research strength of the University of Otago, Christchurch which was rated as the best of the country’s four Schools of Medicine in the recent PBRF assessment by the Tertiary Education Commission,” says Professor Joyce.

Other projects in Christchurch which have received HRC funding are in public health and cardiac research.

Dr Chris Pemberton from the Christchurch Cardioendocrine Research Group is exploring a peptide biomarker which may provide more accurate diagnosis of heart attacks or heart injury. The aim is to speed up accurate diagnosis of people who are admitted to hospital with unidentified chest pain.

Professor Ann Richardson from the Department of Public health and General Practice will be investigating one of New Zealand’s major health problems, bowel cancer. She and her team will investigate how to improve the provision of essential information to reduce the impact of this disease.

They will develop a computer model to estimate future services required for colorectal cancer, the surveillance needed for high risk patients, and bowel cancer screening. This new model is essential for health planning and will be able to be applied to other diseases.

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