Whittlesea resident Sue Cotton has dedicated her life to mental health research, working over 20 years on clinical trials and research to help individuals with complex mental health issues.
Last week, Ms Cotton started her new role at Monash University as Professor of the School of Psychological Sciences, carrying her work over from Orygen, the world’s leading research and knowledge translation organisation that focuses on mental health in young people, and The University of Melbourne.
In her new role, Ms Cotton will be leading a $2.5 million National Health and Research Council (NHMRC) at the Centre of Research Excellence, focusing on improving early intervention opportunities for young people experiencing bipolar disorder.
She will also be leading work in other serious mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.
Ms Cotton said she wanted to build a dedicated mental health research team.
“Working with psychology students to build capacity in the field and training the next generation of new clinicians … the workforce is well in need and really stretched at the moment,” she said.
“It’s the opportunity to build mental health research at Monash … it’s really to promote … mood disorders, so that sort of area I’m wanting to build and expand over.”
Prior to her new role, last December, Ms Cotton received the Oration Award for her work on mental health and more specifically, youth mental health.
The award highlights the prominence of her work in the Australian and New Zealand mental health research communities, such as having secured $50 million in grant funding for her research across 20 plus years.
Ms Cotton said there was plenty of reflection from her award.
“It was actually overwhelming … I suppose sometimes we don’t reflect on what our achievements are, what we do in mental health research, and how we look at the processes and experiences that we get to become an expert in mental health,” she said.
“A lot of reflection, a lot of gratitude – especially towards my team who supported the work and staff from Orygen and The University of Melbourne, and to the young people and their families who have partaken in our research over the years.”
When she does not have her work cap on, Ms Cotton is a single mum, acting as a role model in both her professional and personal life to other women in the field.
“Being a single parent as well, I think trying to accommodate the workforce and supporting staff, particularly female staff – giving them a role model to say that you can do things and achieve things in academic work, even though you may have barriers,” she said.
Working towards a better future for mental health, Ms Cotton said she wanted to make a difference to people experiencing serious mental disorders such as bipolar disorder.
“Bipolar disorder is under recognised in the community, and the time between onset of symptoms and diagnosis is often around 10 years,” she said.
“There’s a lot of people in the community that are impacted, not only the individuals with the disorder, but their families and loved ones – but they’re not getting diagnosed early and getting appropriate treatment.
“Through work that we’re doing at the moment, we’re wanting to reduce that delay and support young people and their families to improve their outcomes over the longer term.”
