Learned analgesic cue association and placebo analgesia in rats: an empirical assessment of an animal model and meta-analysis

This thesis focuses on animal models of placebo analgesia. Placebo analgesia is the experience of reduced pain, or pain relief, without the delivery of a pain-relieving drug or actual reduction of the painful stimulus. Research into the underlying neuro-mechanisms of placebo analgesia have been limited by unreliable animal models of the effect and attempts to replicate human placebo testing paradigms in animals have had mixed outcomes. In many cases, a tolerance to analgesic has been observed instead. The project had two main aims. The first was to replicate a recent model of placebo analgesia. The second aim of the project was to conduct a meta-analysis of the existing published literature and determine the overall effect size of placebo analgesia in rodent models. Experiment 1 sought to replicate a previous model of rodent placebo analgesia. Results from experiment 1 did not support previous findings and showed no evidence for placebo analgesia in rodents. Experiment 2 was a second attempt to replicate a previous model of placebo analgesia. The second attempt adjusted the potential limitations from experiment 1 such as cue chamber intensity and re-ran the protocol using rodents of the same sex and strain as the original paper. Results from experiment 2 were similar to experiment 1 and did not support the hypotheses or provide any evidence for placebo analgesia in rodents. Experiment 3 used a simplified version of the behavioural conditioning methodology from experiments 1 and 2, but was modified to reduce handling stress, to increase the salience of the to-be-conditioned placebo cue, and to reduce stress-induced analgesia. Results from experiment 3 found no evidence for placebo analgesia in rodents was observed. The results from 45 studies across 21 papers were meta-analysed and showed a moderate effect size for placebo analgesia in rodents, and moderator analysis revealed that cue type was a significant factor in the development of the effect in rodents. Using a context cue box as the cue type was found to be the most effective approach to establishing placebo analgesia in rodents. The current research has highlighted the replicability problem in pre-clinical research and as such it is recommended that animal studies looking at placebo analgesia aim to include more methodological detail in their reporting, particularly in regard to cue type. A limitation of the current project was the exclusion of drug tolerance literature that results in nocebo responses. Future research should compare and contrast this body of work more closely with research into placebo analgesia in rodents

Engaging, understanding and including young people in the provision of mental health services

Suicide continues to be one of the leading causes of death among Australians aged 15-24 years. In order to reduce the burden of mental illness it is essential that we not only improve young people's access to professionals and services but ensure that mental health professionals and young people are better equipped to work together in the treatment and management of mental health disorders. Young people have traditionally been viewed within the health sector as clients or service recipients. As a result compliance to treatment, whether pharmacological or psychological has been less than ideal. Current evidence suggests that involving young people directly in the development and delivery of services impacts positively on the individuals experience and service uptake. This paper is based on conference presentations by Reach Out! Youth Ambassadors Rosie Swanton and Ingrid Sorensen at the Australian and New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference in Sydney. These presentations explored Reach Out! a unique Australian Internet-based mental health service for young people. Since launching in 1998 it has been accessed by over four million users and 332 young people have been directly involved in the development and delivery of the service. This paper describes the Reach Out! youth participation model as a case study in youth participation. It presents and suggests practical steps to engage, understand and involve young people to increase the impact of mental health professionals and services in addressing the mental health needs of young people

Young and Well CRC: Engaging young people as research partners

This paper presents the outcomes of an international collaboration between researchers and young people in Australia and the United States, using participatory design to engage young people as research partners in the collaborative development of a conceptual framework for the Online WellBeing Center (OWBC), a repository of evidence-based mental health tools focused on mental health promotion and the prevention of mental illness developed as part of Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre. Eighteen participants (nine in Australia and nine in USA) were involved as key partners through a series of participatory design workshops to develop the framework for the OWBC. Key objectives of the collaboration included an increased understanding of: how to recruit young people to be part of an international project team collaborating remotely; how to use new technologies to manage communication and maintain engagement; how to apply principles of participatory research to create a youth informed research project; how to develop an international stakeholder partnership to ensure relevancy in value systems, cultural orientation and project outcomes. Recommendations included guidelines for how others can establish international collaborations that integrate young people as active project participants

Australian Drug Trends 2019: Key Findings from the National Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) Interviews

The\ua0Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS)\ua0is an ongoing illicit drug monitoring system which has been conducted in all states and territories of Australia since 2000, and forms part of\ua0Drug Trends.In 2019, we have provided a suite of products with the most up-to-date findings from interviews conducted annually from 2000-2019 with a cross-sectional sentinel group of people who regularly inject drugs recruited from all capital cities of Australia