Associate Professor Tamsyn Van Rheenen awarded Fellowship for research to support mood disorder treatments

Associate Professor Tamsyn Van Rheenen has won an Al and Val Rosenstrauss Fellowship from the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation, to support research efforts to characterise cognitive impairments in severe psychiatric disorders and understand the mechanisms behind them.

With the support of the Al and Val Rosenstrauss Fellowship, Associate Professor Van Rheenen will for the first-time map key risk and protective factors to cognitive traits from a trajectory-based perspective that accounts for different developmental windows in the life course of bipolar disorder.

Current first-line treatments for bipolar disorder targets mood and psychotic symptoms, but do not address cognitive problems that substantially impact a person’s ability to manage daily activities and function in educational, employment, and social settings.

Associate Professor Van Rheenen’s research program will contribute knowledge to help the development of intervention strategies targeted to cognitive symptoms. The identification of new clinical, psychological, and neurobiological mechanisms and modifiers of cognitive symptoms in bipolar disorder, and insights into their nature and timin that can be translated into informed treatment strategies.

Associate Professor Van Rheenen is the Head of the Mood-Psychosis Spectrum Group at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, and has previously held NHMRC Early Career and Dame Kate Campbell Fellowships.