Director/Primary Investigator of Lab: Ingrid Wagner, PhD

The Fellowship focuses on the dissemination of empirically informed family based interventions for child and youth mental health problems. The Fellowship joins Child and Youth Mental Health Services with the Queensland University of Technology in a partnership aimed at developing the knowledge and skills of clinicians across the state of Queensland.

Active Funded Projects in Collaboration with CFIS

Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) as an adjunct to the Maudsley Model

Five cases were conducted in a Queensland eating disorder clinic between 2009 and 2014, in which Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) was used as an adjunct to Family-Based Therapy (FBT) for families who did not respond to the FBT model. The intent is to draw upon the broad details of the cases to exemplify key points such as the stage of FBT for transition, the issues that impeded response to FBT, and to utilize one current case to exemplify the ABFT process.

These case studies will be used at both a workshop for the Australian New Zealand Academy of Eating Disorders Conference in August of this year, and as an article in a Special Edition of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy that will be dedicated to ABFT.

Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Adolescent Depression and Suicide  – Evaluation of the Dissemination of the Treatment Model

ABFT emerges from interpersonal theories that suggest Adolescent Depression and Suicide can be precipitated, exacerbated or buffered against by the quality of interpersonal relationships in families. A workshop has been developed in order to disseminate the ABFT model to clinicians and counsellors, and aims to provide training and support to better enable practitioners to adopt this model within their practice. In order to examine the reach of the program, and to increase understanding of what facilitates and creates barriers to adopting this treatment model, we will collect information from participants.

This program is targeted at clinicians from a wide range of backgrounds, and aims not only to encourage both the wide adoption across multiple service sectors, but also to improve fidelity to the model. The CPE program will include three days of seminars in face-to-face format, with opportunities to undertake online group supervision sessions, and advanced training to certification through future workshops.

Proposed Projects in Collaboration with CFIS