The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is high often comorbid with other psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety, disrupted social and occupational functioning, substance abuse and increased suicidality.
Traumatic brain injuries (TBI), often sustained during traumatic experiences, can lead to long-term sequalae, including PTSD and depression. PTSD is characterised by emotional dysregulation, hyper-arousal, avoidance behaviours, and re-experiencing of traumatic episodes. In addition to the primary psychiatric symptoms, secondary sequalae include deficits in cognitive domains, such as inhibition and impaired executive functioning, including working memory and attention modulation. The Mental Health workstream will work with partnered workstreams across this project to develop a computational framework for classifying TBI, PTSD, depression and other commonly comorbid mental health challenges using data-driven, machine learning approaches, neuroimaging measures and associated clinical outcome measures. The Mental Health workstream is led by Professor Rachel Upthegrove, Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, and Dr Jack Rogers, Associate Professor Psychology and Youth Mental Health who also co-lead the Psychosis Immune Multimodal Early Detection Plus (PRIMED+) (URL: https://www.primed-plus.org) research group, utilising advances in technology, medicine, neuroscience, and data-driven analysis to better understand mental illness.
Lead Researchers