FACILITY

Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry

Researching severe mental illness to improve lives

The Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry (CCRN) is an academic centre of excellence for multidisciplinary research into psychiatry and the neurosciences.

The major focus of our research is on psychotic disorders. Our goal is to unlock the complexity of schizophrenia and related disorders by listening to experience, challenging existing ideas, and exploring new approaches to assessment and treatment.

At CCRN, we generate scientifically valid databases to assist us in conducting advanced research into the aetiology of mental disorders, their management and treatment.

We provide research training and supervision of trainee psychiatrists; medicine, psychology and science students; and other mental health professionals.

While educating the community about the scientific understanding of mental disorders and the advances in their treatment and management, we promote and assist high-quality psychiatric, mental health and neuroscience research statewide.

As of 2012 we became a member of the Commonwealth Cooperative Research Centre for Mental Health, with the mandate to develop and validate biomarkers for schizophrenia subtypes.

In keeping with our core mission to produce research with impact, citations to our work continue to increase and our researchers are regularly invited as keynote speakers and presenters at national and international conferences.

Published 600+ research articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals

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Awarded 100+ competitive national and international research grants to a total value of more than $42 million

Hosted national and international research conferences

How CCRN works with the community

CCRN researchers are involved in recruiting and interviewing study participants, while also being in charge of laboratory bench work, processing and analysing databases, employing complex paradigms to tackle specific hypotheses, and disseminating results to a range of audiences.

None of this would be possible without the willingness of patients, family members and others in the community to contribute time and effort to research that will ultimately benefit those at risk for serious disorders of mind and body.

We are particularly fortunate to be working in partnership with people living with mental illness, including the charitable organisation Meeting for Minds (M4M).

We believe that what we are doing at CCRN leads us in the right direction to future knowledge, but we also owe the community research outcomes that can find application now.Winthrop Professor Assen Jablensky
Director, Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry

Our research themes

We have a number of research specialisations, including:

  • Genetic studies of schizophrenia
  • Translational research: ‘bench to bedside and back’
  • Cognitive-perceptual mechanisms of symptoms
  • Language and communication
  • Social cognition and functioning
  • Schizotypal personality traits

Our projects

Some of our major clinical and genetic research projects to date have included:

  • Researchers involved in the WA Family Study of Schizophrenia are discovering, characterising and publishing novel schizophrenia genes
  • Examining in depth the so-called first rank symptoms of schizophrenia disorder
  • Investigating visual information processing and brain bioelectrical responses to stimuli
  • Applying sophisticated statistical modelling to integrate multiple neurocognitive measures into continuous phenotypic traits.

Collaborations and funding

Since the Centre’s inception in 1995, it has raised more than $42 million in funding towards neuropsychiatry research. CCRN is also embedded in major international and national collaborative networks of research into severe mental disorders.

We are active members of large genetics research consortia and linked with institutions in Indonesia, Mongolia, Norway, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Some of these collaborations and funding sources include:

Local (UWA)

  • Centre for Genetic Origin of Health Disease
  • Harry Perkins Research Institute
  • Lions Eye Institute
  • UWA School of Psychology

National

  • Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank (ASRB)
  • Cooperative Research Centre – Mental Health
  • Survey of High Impact Psychosis (SHIP) Study

International

  • International Schizotypy Consortium
  • Meeting for Minds
  • Pedigree-Based Endophenotype Consortium
  • Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC2)
  • World Health Organisation
  • Wellcome Trust Consortium

National Health and Medical Research Council Funded Grants


2016

  • An empirical framework for assessing mortality and morbidity in people with psychotic disorders: A 7-year prospective and 10-year retrospective follow-up of 2075 participants in the Survey of High Impact Psychosis (SHIP) using linked registers

2015

  • Impact of social adversity on the developmental trajectory to mental illness: A study of a whole-population cohort of children at familial high-risk for psychotic disorders

2014

  • Genome sequencing of families with schizophrenia

2013

  • Overcoming barriers to improved physical health in people with severe mental illness

2011

  • Lifecourse trajectories and neuropsychiatric outcomes in an e-cohort of high risk children of mothers with psychosis

2008

  • Memory, synaptic plasticity and gene networks in schizophrenia

Contact Winthrop Professor of Psychiatry and Director of CCRN Assen Jablensky

If you would like to get involved in any of our research projects, contact us on the details below.