I am a young person with lived experience of psychosis and other mental health challenges. It is these experiences that have lead me to work and advocate in the mental health space. I have volunteered for batyr as part of their University of Technology Sydney chapter, have been a youth ambassador for ReachOut and have been on both the national Youth Research Council and Youth Advisory Council for Orygen.

When it comes to employment, I have spent many years in medical administration. More recently I have ventured in the mental health space for my work as a Peer Worker for both NSW Health and ReachOut. I also work with others from all around the globe as a Lived Experience Advisor for the Wellcome Trust. My passion for mental health also extends to my studies.

I graduated from the University of Technology Sydney in 2020 with a degree in Advanced Science with a pre-medicine major. I then went on to continue at UTS in my honours year where I partnered with Orygen in studying depression in First Episode Psychosis. I thoroughly enjoyed research in my honours year and am so excited to return to the field of research in my PhD.

When it comes to most mental health conditions, early intervention is paramount. In psychosis, often this early intervention came in the “prodromal” period (when symptoms are emerging but don’t yet fully meet diagnostic criteria). However, a lot of research is showing that by the prodromal period, it might be too late. Because of this, our research is looking far beyond the prodromal period to a proneness to psychosis which is being conceptualised under the banner of “schizotypy” Schizotypy is a certain pattern of childhood traits that include differences in things like perception, cognition and social behaviour.

We are using schizotypy as somewhat of a mid-point; we will look at the factors that can come together to lead to schizotypy and then how schizotypy can develop into full-blown psychosis. To do this we are using data from the New South Wales Child Development Study, which is a study that has followed 90,000 children, from birth to now, gathering data at certain timepoints along the child’s life. We have schizotypy information for around 27,000 of these children and we will be using this along with other data collected along a child’s life as well as data collected about their parents.

These data could come from sources such as our health system (eg hospitalisations and pharmaceutical benefits scheme use) and other human services agencies (eg police and child protection). We will use innovative statistical analysis of these data to understand the journey from childhood experiences, to schizotypy, and then onto psychosis.

Supervisors: Professor Melissa Green and Dr Oliver Watkeys.