The Mindgardens Neuroscience Network team is in Berlin this week for the 15th International Conference on Early Intervention and Prevention in Mental Health (IEPA15) and the parallel International Physical Health in Youth Stream (iphYs) and International First Episode Vocational Recovery Group (iFEVR) Joint Symposium.

With eight oral presentations and six posters, our staff and research collaborators are prominent contributors to this important bi-annual meeting, highlighting Mindgardens’ world-leading position in translational research in psychosis, which focuses on introducing new interventions as quickly as possible in ordinary clinical settings.

Across the complementary meeting programs, these presentations include:
• Mindgardens Executive Director Professor Jackie Curtis on The Keeping the Body in Mind program, and how to implement a lifestyle and life-skills intervention to prevent weight-gain and cardiometabolic abnormalities in young people with first-episode psychosis as part of routine care
• Dr Vilas Sawrikar on the Mindgardens Youth Integration Project (YIP), which is identifying the core components youth mental health care service system integration and assisting service providers to collaborate more effectively with others in their region.
• Dr Philippa Levy and Phillipa Currey on the implementation of individual placement and support for education within early intervention services for young people.

The posters include:
• Integrating youth mental health systems using the key components of integrated care
• EPPeer: Evaluation of the implementation of a youth peer worker role within an early psychosis program
• A co-designed exploration of young people’s experiences accessing individual education support in a mental health service
• Implementation of transdiagnostic psychosocial group interventions and peer work in a youth community mental health setting
• Y-Quit Vaping: Exploring the vaping habits of Australian youth at risk of psychosis

Professor Curtis said, “I am proud to introduce the innovative work of Mindgardens and our research partners on the world stage, and to see the approaches we pioneered in Sydney adopted and adapted internationally as gold-standard interventions. We are engaging in important conversations with clinicians, researchers and people with lived experience from many countries and I look forward to future collaborations to advance our shared objective of high-quality, responsive care that recognises the unique needs of people with early psychosis.”