We are delighted to announce the recipients of the 2024 RANZCP Foundation PhD scholarships.

Dr Sean Halstead

Exploration of the health burden of multiple chronic physical conditions in people living with severe mental illness.

People living with severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, face significant gaps in health outcomes, such as a shortened life expectancy of up to ten to twenty years. These health challenges are further compounded by the simultaneous burden of complex physical health challenges that people living with severe mental illness commonly experience.

Dr Halstead will investigate how having multiple physical diseases, or ‘multimorbidity’, impacts people living with severe mental illness. Important areas that require research concern understanding how common multimorbidity is, how it impacts health gaps such as shortened life expectancy, and the relationship between psychiatric medication and multiple physical illnesses.

This work hopes to contribute to the growing development of holistic models of care in psychiatry that aim to protect and improve both the physical and mental health of people living with severe mental illness.

Dr Halstead is a trainee and is studying at the University of Queensland. Dr Halstead was awarded the Foundation Partners PhD scholarship. 

Dr Jacqueline Huber

Psychiatric Emergency Care Centers: what are they good for?

The growing demand for mental health services in Australia highlights the critical role of Psychiatric Emergency Care Centres (PECCs), introduced in New South Wales in 2005 to alleviate pressure on Emergency Departments.

Providing up to 48 hours of inpatient care for individuals with low aggression risk, PECCs are integral to mental health crisis response. However, their effectiveness remains under-researched. To address these critical gaps in understanding, Dr Huber is engaging in a multi-phase co-designed project to eventually produce a non-pharmacological PECC intervention for people in crisis.

A systematic review and a qualitative analysis of PECC staff experiences are complete, with the next steps including a qualitative analysis of service users, families, and carer participants and developing standardized outcome measures through international collaboration across six countries.

This project finally aims to co-design and test a novel non-pharmacological intervention, building an evidence base for standardized inpatient crisis care.

Dr Huber is a Senior Staff Specialist Psychiatrist at St Vincent's Hospital and is studying at the University of Sydney. Dr Huber was awarded the Trisno Family PhD scholarship. Although the work is being conducted in NSW, it will have applicability across all psychiatric emergency settings, particularly in Australia and New Zealand.

The RANZP Foundation Partners and the Trisno PhD Scholarships are designed to encourage and support PhD research in psychiatry by RANZCP members. Each scholarship is valued at $60,000. The scholarships are supported by RANZCP Foundation Partners and the Trisno Family.