Leon Piterman prize awarded to Dr Melinda Goodyear for research into supporting children of parents with a mental illness
Research exploring evidence-informed and co-designed models of support for children of parents with a mental illness has been recognised with the Leon Piterman Prize, which recognises early career researcher publications in social and educational research, and is awarded annually by the Monash Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.
Dr Melinda Goodyear, Senior Research Fellow at Monash Rural Health, led the publication 'Development of an Evidence-Informed and Codesigned Model of Support for Children of Parents With a Mental Illness— “It Takes a Village” Approach', which was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
The research recognised a lack of resources for families in rural areas of Austrian alps and the ability of families to cope with daily life when parents are struggling with mental illness. To address this, the research looked at building a sustainable intervention that worked for the local setting.
Dr Goodyear explained some of the barriers for parents with mental health issues.
“Families that are facing adversity, often don’t have the resources that the rest of us do to function everyday. For parents with mental health issues, daily tasks such as making the kids lunches and waking up to get them to school on time can be much more difficult due to the symptoms of medication or symptoms of the illness. This can interfere with the way a family functions.”
The “It Takes A Villlage” project was first developed from an ideas lab, funded by the Austrian government and partly facilitated by Professor Darryl Mayberry from Monash Rural Health. The project was awarded a three million euro grant for four years, with Dr Goodyear appointed as the Australian lead of early career researchers from around the world.
The study took place in an alpine region of Austria, north of Italy, with a number of small towns and central health services, similar to Gippsland in Victoria. There were virtually no services identified for children of mental health patients and mental health services could not identify if any of their patients were parents.
Coming from a very low base of support, the research worked towards co-design of a program to support children of mental health patients by combining evidence-based components, “local practical wisdom”, and local lived experience. This type of research approach was fairly new to the region, where pharmaceutical randomised control trials were typically the main type of research.
Interviewing parents and mental health practitioners uncovered stories of children having to stay in hospital while their parents were being treated, as there was no other support for them. By involving family members, psychiatrists, community workers, nurses, social workers, mental health service leaders and local politicians in co-design workshops, the concept was developed of a “village facilitator” outside of the mental health system who works with the family to help the child through local network-building of formal and informal support systems.
“One of the major achievements of the project was to have parental status recorded on intake to hospital in Austria, which is not recorded on intake forms in Australia, despite 15 years of campaigning.”
Implementing the project, a number of difficulties had to be overcome, such as stigma about identifying that you have a mental health issue to other community members, and creating trust for the service which was new in its approach, separate from existing welfare services. Community campaigns were developed to convey the message that “you can be a good parent if you have mental health issues with a bit of support.”
Implementing the plan for people mainly involved getting a network of people around (service providers and community members) and making a plan of support. To avoid issues of mental health stigma with the wider community, networks with family and extended family as well as other families with mental health issues were strengthened.
“The outcomes are really favourable and all the stories of parents talk about how it’s changed the way they feel about themselves and the way they parent and the way the children are. The children are so much happier talking out issues in the family with the parent more openly and getting support for their situation, so that they were less worried about their parents and they could get their own needs met.”
“The program changes people's attitudes and knowledge. To implement something new, you give people enough motivation to put resources into their services to get it to happen. It is translational research that transforms people.”
“I am really grateful that the university is recognising this type of research through the Leon Piterman Prize and the type of approach to the way we change situations for families.”
This research has resulted in many published research papers from global researchers collaborating on the project. A practice manual is also available to support implementation in rural and other settings, and Dr Goodyear is currently working in her role at Monash Rural Health with Emerging Minds to adapt the program for delivery in Australia.