The PRIMERA Project – Parental Mental Health and Family-Focused Interventions

Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH)

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.23289
In this ‘In Conversation’ podcast, Professor Sinéad McGilloway, Founder-Director of the Centre for Mental Health and Community Research, Maynooth University, County Kildare, Ireland, and doctoral fellow Christine Mulligan, provide valuable insight into the PRIMERA programme, which investigated how best to support young families experiencing parental mental illness.
The PRIMERA project team won ACAMH’s prestigious Lionel Hersov Memorial Award in 2022, which recognises practice teams at the forefront of the advancement of child and adolescent mental health research and practice. There is an overview of the PRIMERA programme and insight into the key findings.
Discussion points include;

• How prevalent parental mental illness is.
• What the provision of services is like for affected families.
• How developed is the evidence for family-focussed practice in this area?
• The Family Talk intervention programme – key findings and evaluation of the programme.
• Implications of the findings for CAMH professionals, and for mental health professionals working with adult service users.
• The barriers that could undermine the long-term sustainability of family-focussed practice.
• The recommendations for policymakers.
• What is next for the Family Talk intervention?