2000 Stories Study
- Project status: Active
Research area: Population Health > Centre for Adolescent Health
2000 Stories: Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study (VAHCS) and Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort Study (VIHCS)
The study investigates mental and physical health problems and risk behaviours in the adolescent to young adulthood transition, and whether pre-conception factors can predict child and parental outcomes into childhood in the next generation.
The study investigates mental and physical health problems and risk behaviours in the adolescent to young adulthood transition, and whether pre-conception factors can predict child and parental outcomes into childhood in the next generation.
Overview
The 2000 Stories: Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study (VAHCS) is a landmark longitudinal study spanning almost 30 years. The project began in 1992 with around 2000 Year 9 students (14-15 years of age). They completed 6 assessments during school (from Years 9 – 12), three interviews in young adulthood (aged around 21, 24 and 29) and were interviewed at 35 and 41 years of age.
The first six surveys alone created one of the most comprehensive pictures of adolescent development in the world to date. We looked at many aspects of teenage health and behaviour, including mental health, personality and behaviour, school, family, and drug and alcohol use. This information has been used to improve the health of future generations by influencing policy and informing prevention programs.
More recently, we have focussed on how teenage experiences, health and lifestyles may affect physical and emotional health in adulthood and in the next generation. Our findings have helped bring global attention to the important role of adolescence in shaping future health.
Many of our original 2000 stories participants have now had children of their own, creating the unique opportunity to explore how the health of one generation may be related to the next. The Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort Study (VIHCS) was launched in 2006 and aims to understand the processes that might influence many aspects of health and wellbeing across generations.
VIHCS looks at the processes of social and psychological development in childhood. It is one of the first studies in the world to embed a study of child development within an existing longitudinal study of parent psychosocial development.
Between 2006 and 2014, we recruited 1,030 children from 665 of our original 2000 stories participants. We interviewed parents four times: during pregnancy, two months after birth, at their child’s first birthday, and as their child turned eight years old. During these interviews, we learnt about our participants’ experiences of becoming a parent, including the social, emotional and lifestyle changes that take place with this transition; and about the health and wellbeing of their children as they grow up.
From 2022, we will again contact our participants as their children turn 15 years old for the fifth wave of VIHCS. This will be an exciting opportunity to check in with our VIHCS kids at the same age as their parents were when they began taking part in the study.
We hope that the information collected during this stage of the study will significantly improve our understanding of how to best promote the health and wellbeing of the next generation of Australians
Information for participants
Security
Your privacy is upheld when your contact details are received and that your details are stored securely following strict protocols.
Ethics and Privacy
All information collected is kept strictly confidential. Survey responses are kept anonymous by being coded and stored securely and separately to your name and contact details.
All data is stored securely and in compliance with National Health and Medical Research guidelines, as well as Royal Children’s Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee requirements.
Results of the study are published in professional journals and presented at key health conferences in Australia and internationally. No individual information will be identified in any publication or presentation.
What's next?
In 2022, we will contact the first of our VIHCS kids as they turn 15 years old. This is an exciting opportunity to interview participants of the family study at the same age as their parents were when they began in the study, allowing us to understand how adolescence in our parent group in the 1990s differs from that of their children.
Research team
Lead researcher - Professor George Patton
George Patton is a Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Health Research at the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. He is a Senior Principal Research Fellow with Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). He has a clinical background in child and adolescent psychiatry and a research background in developmental epidemiology.
George has had extensive engagement globally around child and adolescent health, growth, and development. He chaired the 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, has led two special Series in adolescent health for the Journal and publishing sentinel papers on adolescent mortality, burden of disease, the adolescent investment case and intergenerational risks. He has had earlier consultancy and advisory roles with the WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, USAID and the World Bank and scientific advisory roles with international groups, including Peking University, Tokyo University and the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.
He is a member of STAGE, the technical advisory group to WHO’s DG on Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition. George has also led long term Australian longitudinal studies on the mental health, growth and development of children and adolescents, including a prospective intergenerational cohort. His research extends to large scale early intervention, prevention and mental health promotion trials from primary-care, community and school platforms in both high resource and low resource settings.
Project members
Deputy Director (VIHCS) - Dr Elizabeth Spry
Dr Liz Spry is an investigator and Deputy Director of VIHCS: The Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort Study, and manages the study publication strategy and collaborations. Liz has been working with the study since 2009, and managed the tenth wave of interviews with our original participants in their mid-thirties and the perinatal phase of our intergenerational study. She completed her PhD in Psychology in 2020. Liz’s work has a particular focus on intergenerational and life-course epidemiology, using natural experimental and statistical methods of causal inference to identify mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of mental health. She aims to explore how parents’ developmental histories and life experience impact the resources they bring to parenting, and how best to promote positive mental health outcomes for parents and children.
Chief Investigator – Professor Craig Olsson
Craig Olsson is a Developmental Psychologist with expertise in life course epidemiology and human genetics. Along with being a chief investigator for 2000 Stories, he also directs one of Australia's oldest running longitudinal studies of social-emotional development, The Australian Temperament Project Generation 3 Study. He is actively involved in several other Australasian cohort studies and is the National Convenor of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) Longitudinal Studies Network. He has been based at the RCH since 1994, completed his PhD through the University of Melbourne in 2000, and currently holds a joint appointment in life course epidemiology with the MCRI and Deakin University. He is founding convener of the MCRI LifeCourse initiative, and has an active interest in helping researchers gain a better understanding of cohort studies run on campus, population and clinical, and how they might be accessed for advancing understanding of child health and development.
Project Manager - Dr Carolina Murphy
Caroline has worked with 2000 Stories since 2015. Initially coordinating the VIHCS arm of the study, she took over as Project manager in 2021.Caroline has completed a Masters in Educational Psychology and a PhD in psychology and has worked in various research roles since graduating. Caroline has worked with infants, children, and families within several research projects. Her areas of interests include early intervention and child development.
Data Manager - Steph Aarsman
Steph started working with 2000 Stories as a Data Manager in February 2018. She recently completed a Master of Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne. She is particularly interested in learning about methods involved in analysing longitudinal data. She also is passionate about childhood and adolescent development.
Biostatistician - Hanafi Mohamad Husin
Hanafi joined the 2000 Stories team as a biostatistician in February 2020. He is also involved in another longitudinal study, The Childhood to Adolescence Transition Study (CATS). He has completed Masters of Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne. He is interested in causal inference methods and analysis of longitudinal data.
Collaborations
Thanks to our key partners, funders, and supporters.
- University of Queensland - Centre for Youth Substance Abuse
- National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre
- University of Melbourne - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research
- University of Bristol - Centre for Academic Mental Health, and Bristol Medical School
- University of Melbourne - Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
- University of Otago - Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study
- Cannabis Cohorts Research Consortium
- Deakin University - School of Psychology
- University of Tasmania - Menzies Institute for Medical Research
- University of the Sunshine Coast - School of Health and Behavioural Sciences
- University of Otago Christchurch - Dept Psychological Medicine
- King’s College London - Section for Women's Mental Health, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience
Funding
- National Health and Medical Research Council - NHMRC
- VicHealth
- Australian Rotary Health Mental Health of Young Australians Research Grant
- Australian Federal Government Department of Health and Ageing
- Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Publications
Supporting Mums
Postnatal depression (PND) affects many women around the world and can limit women’s own ongoing wellbeing, as well as their capacity to enjoy being a parent and engaging with their infants. Mothers who experience mental health problems during their adolescence or young adulthood are most at risk. Mothers with previous mental health problems are up to five times more likely to experience PND than those without.
We explored potential ways to prevent PND for at-risk women. We used a sample of 398 mothers (600 pregnancies) from the Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort Study (VIHCS). We assessed their mental health 12 times over 20 years, from adolescence to the first year postpartum.
We found that more than half the risk of PND in mothers with pre-pregnancy symptoms was mediated by depressive symptoms and a lack of social support during pregnancy. Partner support was important in reducing the risk of PND for these mothers.
Our findings suggest we could potentially halve the risk of PND for at-risk mothers by effective intervention during pregnancy, to reduce their depressive symptoms and improve their social support and quality relationships.
Even greater opportunities to prevent PND may arise from a greater investment in preconception care, to disrupt the complex pathways increasing the risk of PND. We found persistent mental health problems of adolescence were associated with the greatest increase in risk of PND symptoms. Investing in adolescent mental health and education around healthy relationships may limit mental health symptom persistence and strengthen social support before pregnancy.
Intervening well before pregnancy benefits women’s health. And, it benefits the health and development of the next generation.
Prospective Parents Mental Health Linked to Premature Birth
Dr Elizabeth Spry published a new study in 2020, one of the 2000 Stories investigators, in EClinicalMedicine. Findings from this study may offer innovative approaches to preconception care. Mum’s health is often the focus of children’s early growth and development. However, this study has shown that both Mum and Dad’s mental health are associated with the risk of premature birth.
Pre-term birth is common ‘but the underlying causes have been unknown’ says Dr Claire Wilson, the study’s co-lead. Dr Wilson notes that 'preterm birth can carry lifelong effects on health and development such as visual and hearing impairments and poor health and growth.' The study found that men with persistent stress and anxiety throughout adolescence and young adulthood were more likely to have a baby born premature. This link suggests that getting mental health right during adolescence may not only help the individual, but could have positive effects for their future child’s health and development.
Alcohol and parenthood
Important new research from our team has examined whether becoming a parent reduces problem alcohol use long term.
A team of researchers, led by Rohan Borschmann, analysed data from 4,015 participants in 3 long-term cohort studies (the 2000 Stories study, the Australian Temperament Project, and the Christchurch Health and Development Study) over a 15-year period to investigate whether men and women drank less when they became parents. They found that while 25% of women who were not a parent reported recent binge drinking, only 7% of women with a 1-year-old reported recent binge drinking.
However, women only took a temporary time-out from drinking and after 5 years, women's drinking had returned to pre-parenting levels. Interestingly, men did not change their drinking behaviours about becoming a parent. We know that having a parent with an alcohol problem can potentially have many adverse outcomes for kids, so these findings highlight the need for investing in alcohol prevention programs in young adults before they become parents.
Let’s talk about Dads
Research from the 2000 Stories study has shown that men with a history of common mental health problems are four times more likely to experience mental health problems during their partner’s pregnancy. Health services and research have typically focused on the mental health of mothers during and after pregnancy. This paper, led by 2000 Stories researcher Elizabeth Spry, highlights the importance of the mental health of dads and the need to identify and support men with pre-existing mental health issues before they become fathers.
Adolescence and the next generation
An article in one of the world's top academic journals, Nature was led by the Chief Investigator of our study Professor George Patton. This article, titled 'Adolescence and the next generation', highlights the importance of investing in adolescent health as this impacts on the health of the next generation. We know that the first 1000 days of life are critically important for future health, but there is mounting evidence that influences on health begin well before conception and can track back to the parent's adolescence. With changing social trends, such as timing of parenthood, investments in improving young people's health will yield benefits not only for them but also for future generations.
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Contact us
2000 Stories
Murdoch Children's Research Institute
The Royal Children's Hospital
50 Flemington Road
Parkville VIC 3052
Australia
Phone: 1800 706 101 (toll free Australia)
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