Prof Tim Slade (USYD)

Abstract

The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use promotes excellence, innovation and collaboration by bringing together world-leading researchers, clinicians, people with lived experience and community to share skills, synergise data, harness new technologies and trial innovative programs to prevent and treat mental and substance use disorders. This talk will provide a brief overview of the centre, it’s major activities and some exciting projects planned and currently underway. I will then focus more specifically on one of our epidemiology projects, a prospective observational cohort study tracking the young adult outcomes of those supplied alcohol by their parents. Parental supply of alcohol is a relatively common practice in Australia, believed by some parents to be an effective means of teaching their children to drink responsibly. Contrary to this common belief, research suggests that parental provision of alcohol to adolescents is associated with elevated risk of subsequent alcohol use severity and problems. What remains unclear is what mechanisms connect parental supply of alcohol to later alcohol-related harms. In a critical step toward identifying prevention targets, this study used causal mediation analysis, employing robust methods to minimise risk of bias, to test potentially causal mediators of the relationship between parental supply of alcohol and subsequent harms among adolescents. The implications of the findings for prevention of alcohol related harms will be discussed.