The Travel Grant Series helped Professor John Gleeson to develop a global perspective on his groundbreaking research into youth mental health.
PROFESSOR JOHN GLEESON
Head of School/ School of Psychology /Faculty of Health Sciences - Australian Catholic University
For those with no experience of mental health problems, it’s hard to imagine how debilitating this disease can be. Just doing normal things that most of us take for granted - like travel, work and socialising - can all seem too daunting. That’s why Campus Travel was delighted to award its 2015 Travel Grant to Professor John Gleeson, who has a special interest in helping young people afflicted by serious mental health problems.
As a Professor in the School of Psychology at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Professor Gleeson is using cutting-edge technology to pioneer a highly novel web-based platform called – Moderated Online Social Therapy (MOST).
For the past six years, Professor Gleeson has been working on developing MOST in collaboration with Orygen Youth Health and the University of Melbourne. The unique, online platform is a world first that aims to deliver early intervention for young people at the time of their first episode of psychosis.
With MOST attracting world-wide interest, Professor Gleeson was keen to use his travel grant to meet with colleagues and mental health specialists in other countries who could lend an international perspective and to help refine the system.
“There is a strong need to explore the relevance of the technology in different communities around the world, however funding for research travel is very hard to come by and often has very strict guidelines attached to it,” said Professor Gleeson.
With the assistance of specialist research centres and clinical based contacts overseas, Professor Gleeson wanted to test MOST in other countries to demonstrate that it is both portable and relevant. For Professor Gleeson, the trip also presented the opportunity to develop long-term associations and to broaden the current Australian randomised trials to an international level.
The MOST program has been written and created by a specialist early psychosis team and is specifically aimed at 15 to 25 years olds - the peak ages for the onset of psychosis. By providing peer-to-peer interaction and support online, along with expert interdisciplinary moderation and peer-moderation, MOST is designed to prevent a reoccurrence and to lead to a full functional recovery.
For Professor Gleeson and his team the beauty of the program is that it takes advantage of internet and mobile technologies which are available in most countries, making the program totally portable. This means that it is easy and affordable to implement anywhere and it is accessible to youth even in remote and rural locations.
The platform has a strengths-based focus, to support participants and to help them identify their positive characteristics. It is also designed to deliver an internet-based early intervention program that empowers youth is be more involved in their own treatment and recovery. It’s available 24/7, is youth-friendly and there is no stigma attached to utilising it.
MOST is also designed to be something young people can use every day, much like Facebook, but with its very own unique features. It seamlessly integrates peer based online social networking, individually tailored interactive psychosocial interventions and the involvement of expert mental health and peer moderators to ensure the safety of the intervention.
“The big picture is to support people to make a full recovery from psychosis – to enhance their quality of life and to get them back to social functioning with the aim to prevent a second reoccurrence,” says Professor Gleeson. “The key to achieving this is to keep people engaged in the treatment and to help them to help themselves in an accepting and supportive environment.”
A randomised trial of MOST has been conducted in Melbourne, with 80 participants recruited through Orygen Youth Health. Professor Gleeson is the first to admit that the development and implementation of a purpose-built platform such as MOST, is a long-term endeavour. It is a resource intensive process that requires the participants to be followed up over time to determine its effectiveness and to show that it has a sustained effect. However, Professor Gleeson and his team hope to see a roll it out within the next five years.