The NSW State Government has recently provided funding to the amount of $16 million for the construction of a Youth Mental Health Facility dedicated to uncovering developmental paths to adult mental illness. This new purpose built facility is designed to provide the most innovative research environment in the nation for studying the genetic, epigenetic and related developmental paths to adult mental illness. It will be located immediately behind and linked to the six-storey building that houses our basic science laboratories (Building G) as well as immediately adjacent and linked to the seven-storey clinical and translational research facilities (Building F) of the Brain and Mind Research Institute.

The combination of major advances in small animal models of psychiatric disorder with new insights from human genetics, epigenetic processes and environmental impacts on the later stages of adolescent and early adult brain development will allow the specific testing of new models of pathways to adult psychiatric illness. The facility will also permit expansion of the current clinical services suites (through the link to Building F) to focus on enhanced care for those with the most-treatment resistant psychotic and major mood disorders.