FAMILY

The problem

Services lack an evidence-based, safe way to use family context in youth depression care.

The practical gap is not simply that we need a larger dataset. It is that services and policy lack an evidence-based, youth-safe way to use family context in early identification and service planning. FAMILY asks which family-context markers are evidence-supported, administratively measurable, clinically useful, acceptable to young people and carers, and safe enough to inform support.

Preliminary HILDA work provides proof of concept: a data-efficient intergenerational sample of 43,817 parent-child pairs across 23 waves shows significant maternal mental-health gradients for both sons and daughters, with near-zero paternal estimates in the same model. The follow-up youth mental-health analysis is deliberately cautious — it shows family vulnerability strongly stratifies which young people sit in the lower tail of the mental-health distribution, without claiming causal parental effects or parental blame. The translational opportunity is early support, not causal attribution.

The approach

Three work packages, not four equal studies.

FAMILY is architected as evidence and data feasibility, safe-use co-design, and implementation readiness — with NSW/CHeReL/education data treated as a future scale-up pathway rather than a core two-year dependency. The funded product is not more HILDA regressions and not a bespoke NSW linkage that must complete inside 24 months. It is a co-designed Family-Aware Youth Depression Support Framework.

In analytic terms, the empirical component asks whether parent- and household-level markers — such as parental mental health, service contact, socioeconomic stress, household structure and related vulnerabilities or protective factors — predict youth depression-related outcomes, including psychological distress, clinical/survey indicators, treatment contact, service intensity and care gaps. The goal is observational marker development and service translation, not causal attribution.

PLIDA's Core Relationships module is the key administrative opportunity, providing parent-child and partner relationships where available, triangulated with the National Health Survey, National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, MBS, PBS, income, demographic, location, Census and social-service modules. The project will not overclaim diagnostic precision: survey-based clinical indicators, self-reported measures, and administrative treatment/service-contact proxies will be clearly distinguished.

Partner value

What partners help shape, and what they receive in return.

FAMILY is structured as a co-designed translational project, not a one-way academic exercise. Partners help decide which family-context markers are used, how they are used, and what should never be inferred — and gain acknowledgement, translational outputs, and a foothold in a fast-developing area of youth mental-health policy.

• Shared framework design Direct input into the Family-Aware Youth Depression Support Framework — marker domains, safe-use principles, "do not use" rules, and service workflows for your setting.
• Clinical & implementation relevance Vignettes and workflow testing grounded in real settings — adolescent GP consultation, youth mental-health intake, school wellbeing referral, and community mental-health service planning.
• Data governance input Where relevant, involvement in PLIDA module selection, disclosure controls, and the NSW/CHeReL/education scale-up specification.
• Acknowledgement & co-authorship Formal acknowledgement in publications and reports. Co-authorship opportunities where partner staff contribute substantively to analysis or interpretation.
• Early positioning First-mover access to a practical, ethically cautious framework directly relevant to national conversations on youth mental-health early intervention.

Who we are seeking

A compact, complementary team — not a large consortium.

The immediate need is a small set of collaborators who can make the family-aware framework clinically valid, youth-safe, implementable and data-feasible. Roles can be tailored around clinical input, implementation testing, lived-experience governance, data governance, or education-sector scale-up.

Research team

A Chief Investigator and Associate Investigators spanning clinical psychology, adolescent health, education and justice health.

FAMILY brings together expertise in intergenerational quantitative methods, clinical and developmental psychology, adolescent primary care, educational psychology, and linked-data/justice-health outcomes. The team continues to seek lived-experience and service-implementation partners to strengthen the translational pathway.

Chief Investigator

Associate Investigators

The team continues to seek a primary care/youth-service implementation partner, a lived-experience/co-design partner, and PLIDA/data-governance expertise to strengthen the implementation and scale-up pathway.