Guest 1: Liz Westrupp, PhD scholar at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
Research topic: Adult psychiatric outcomes of very low birth weight survivors
Introduction: Since the 1970s, survival rates of very low birth weight (VLBW) children have increased dramatically. Childhood studies have identified strong associations between birth weight and a variety of behavioural and psychiatric outcomes, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders, autism and other negative psychosocial outcomes. However the evidence is less clear as to whether these problems persist into adulthood. Furthermore, research to date has failed to adequately examine factors that increase the risk for psychopathology, and protect individuals from developing these mental health problems.
Study: This study will determine the rate and nature of psychopathology in an extremely vulnerable group of individuals – those born very small. More importantly, this study will describe the evolution of psychological disturbance in this population, and explore which factors are contributing to the development of these problems and which are protective. This information has considerable relevance to future generations of thousands of children born very small and immature each year. It is envisaged that the findings will form the basis for the development of preventative programs that will be evaluated in future randomised controlled trials.
Findings: Findings were consistent with extensive research evidence showing strong associations between birth weight and childhood attention deficits, behaviour problems and psychiatric outcomes. This is the first longitudinal research to show that VLBW adults are more at risk of having several psychiatric disorders and that childhood behaviour problems childhood behaviour problems and psychiatric disorders tend to persist into adulthood in this population.
Guest 2: Sarah Ballard, physiotherapist. Sarah discussed how physiotherapy treatments actually heal your aches and pains and the variety of techniques that can be used.
Other stories:
– ice skating on Europa,
– slime mould robots,
– the psychology of dogs, babies and hardware stores.
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Direct podcast download: Einstein-A-Go-Go-20090913.mp3
