Building capacity in academic psychiatry: The Queensland Mental Health Research Alliance

We note with interest a recent cluster of articles in the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (Henderson et al., 2015; Lewis and Jorm, 2015) and Australasian Psychiatry (Kisely, 2015) on the topic of academic psychiatry. These articles highlight problems in recruitment and capacity building in academic psychiatry. Why aren’t more psychiatric registrars and junior psychiatrists engaged in research and attracted to research careers? The re-introduction of a Scholarly Project is a positive step by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) to foster that crucial clinical curiosity in trainees. In this commentary, we would like to discuss new developments designed specifically to encourage capacity building in academic psychiatry in Queensland.

In 2013, three leading academic centres in Brisbane formed the Queensland Mental Health Research Alliance. The three founding partners in the Alliance are the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and the Queensland Brain Institute (University of Queensland). In addition to consolidating and growing collaborative research between these three peak mental health research bodies, the Alliance aims to ‘synergize efforts to build capacity within mental health research – in particular to recruit and train clinicians in mental health research and to attract emerging mental research leaders to Queensland’.

The Alliance quickly identified a need to invest in research training for psychiatric registrars. Research seminars have been held with a specific focus on opportunities for clinicians interested in commencing a PhD. Based on the goodwill generated within the three founding partners and associated local hospital and health services, funds were identified to support three Research Fellowships for psychiatric registrars. The positions are for 2 years, at half-time research and half-time clinical training. Henderson et al. (2015) called for a ‘coalition of the willing’ between health providers (e.g. governments) and academic settings (e.g. universities, Medical Research Institutes) to fund training in academic psychiatry. Queensland researchers have responded to these same needs. Similar training positions have also been funded by the New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry.

This year, two basic trainees under the 2012 Competency Based Programme were awarded Research Fellowships. Even though there is much goodwill among the participating academic and health partners, these fellows will have to juggle roles and responsibilities in not only research but also in services provision and training. Moreover, although it was not a focus of the recent editorials, the personal cost of such endeavours, in particular striking the right work–life balance, can also be challenging.

Despite these challenges, we are optimistic that the new Queensland Research Fellowships will provide the trainees with an environment where they can learn research and clinical skills at the same time. We believe that it takes a mix of curiosity, passion and tenacity to build a research scientist, and these fellowships will kindle these characteristics in trainees (McGrath, 2014).

There is a vast amount of untapped clinical wisdom in our profession that awaits scientific scrutiny. Apart from harnessing clinical skills, we need to train psychiatrists to actively engage with the broad discipline of neuroscience and genetics. The pace of discovery in neuroscience is remarkable, and now, more than ever, psychiatrists need to engage in multidisciplinary research with basic scientists. Put bluntly, if we want to fix broken brains, we first need to understand how healthy brains are built and how they work (Fornito et al., 2015). We need clinical researchers who can generate novel treatments and design better ways to deliver services. How can we best incubate the next John Cade? We hope that these initiatives from the Queensland Mental Health Research Alliance will encourage other centres in Australia and New Zealand to trial similar experiments.

See Editorial by Henderson et al., 2015, 49(1): 9–12; see also Editorial by Lewis and Jorm, 2015(2): 99–101.