NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Mental Health and Substance Use

Generating new research to prevent and treat comorbid mental health and substance use disorders.

Mental health and substance use disorders lead to more years of disability in people than any other disorder.

The nature of these disorders also means they often occur together (comorbidity), with more than 300,000 Australians affected every year.

The current evidence surrounding the effective prevention and treatment of the concurrent illnesses requires greater understanding, which is why the Centre of Research Excellence in Mental Health and Substance Use (CREMS) was founded in 2012.

CREMS is a world-first research centre and brings together national and international experts on comorbidity.

Research aims

By generating new research, CREMS aims to improve current understanding of the effective prevention and treatment of comorbid mental health and substance use disorders.

This research falls into three streams, including:

• Prevention - focusing on ways to catch a potential problem before it causes disability, vocational, educational or social harm.
• Treatment - to develop and evaluate new methods of treating the disorders.
• Epidemiology - examining the prevalence, correlation and natural history of the disorders.

An integral aspect of the research is that the findings become part of educational curricula, training programs, clinical resources and available to the general public.

CREMS involves four national and three international universities, each bringing leading academics and essential skills to the research.

The leadership team

Professor Maree Teesson from the University of New South Wales is the Director and Chief Investigator of CREMS. Associate Professor Andrew Baillie from Macquarie University is a specialist in anxiety disorders and comorbidity with alcohol use, and contributes to the treatment and epidemiology streams of research.