{"id":1715,"date":"2020-02-17T15:02:43","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T15:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/mental-health\/?p=1715"},"modified":"2020-02-17T15:35:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T15:35:22","slug":"integrating-high-quality-mental-health-research-and-undergraduate-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/mental-health\/integrating-high-quality-mental-health-research-and-undergraduate-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Integrating high-quality mental health research and undergraduate teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr William Davies, Schools of Medicine and Psychology<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major challenge in mental\nhealth research is to disseminate our emerging findings to relevant stakeholder\ngroups \u2013 these include fellow academics, patients and support organisations, clinicians,\nfunders and charities, and healthcare professionals such as genetic\ncounsellors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another key stakeholder group are\nundergraduate students, who, through being well-informed citizens should be\nwell-positioned to effect positive societal change, whether that be through\nperforming their own research or through multiple other mechanisms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an academic involved in both\nresearch and teaching, I believe that it is incumbent upon people like me to\nensure that students are provided with the most up-to-date and robust\ninformation regarding topics like mental health, and that they are given the\nskills to critique and interpret research findings. As such, it was extremely\ngratifying to be recently awarded the \u2018Excellence in Teaching (Undergraduate)\u2019\naward from the School of Medicine<\/a>.\n   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My teaching role is varied, and\ninvolves lecturing to large student cohorts, facilitating smaller tutorial\nsessions (e.g. in so-called Case-based Learning<\/a>),\nand one-to-one project supervision, across two Schools within the University. My\nresearch is concerned with understanding why males and females behave\ndifferently, and why\nthe genders are differentially vulnerable to certain mental health conditions<\/a>;\nI am particularly interested in the role of the sex (X and\nY) chromosomes<\/a>, and in why some\nwomen develop psychiatric disorders shortly after giving birth<\/a>. Discussion\nof these topics, together with an assessment of possible future applications of\nbehavioural genetics research, comprises a main thread of my lectures on the \u2018Biological\nPsychology and Individual Differences\u2019 and \u2018Behavioural Genetics\u2019 modules\nwithin School of Psychology<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undergraduate research projects\nallow students to experience life as a bona fide<\/em> researcher, with all\nthe attendant excitement (and stress!). Through working on an important and\nnovel question, and through interacting with practising and highly skilled\ninvestigators, undergraduate students can rapidly gain an appreciation of the\nchallenges, complexities and nuances involved in developing and testing\nhypotheses, and generating and contextualising data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A welcome innovation is the University\u2019s internship schemes SPRInt (School of Psychology) and the on campus research internships<\/a>, which enable students to perform paid research work alongside an academic mentor for a short period, usually in the Summer vacation – my last SPRInt student recently had a high-impact paper published where she is the first author; this paper demonstrated that individuals with a particular genetic mutation on the X chromosome are at increased risk of mood and heart problems<\/a>, and, as such, should provide additional important information for affected individuals, their families and clinicians, and genetic counsellors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research projects are a core\ncomponent of many degrees, including the Intercalated B.Sc. degrees completed\nby some medical students \u2013 a high proportion of these yield important scientific\nand clinical insights. Studies led by Intercalated students within my group\nhave characterised behavioural features associated with the genetic skin\ncondition X-linked ichthyosis in males<\/a>\nand females<\/a>,\nand have shown that variation within\nthe sex-linked STS<\/em> gene is associated with attention<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to academic skills,\nproject work teaches several vital transferable skills including networking and\ncollaboration, data presentation and communication, and the ability to critique\nevidence and consider potential ethical implications surrounding the work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To summarise my experience, research-led\nteaching at institutions like Cardiff University<\/a> has profound benefits, not\nonly for undergraduate students (who profit from being integrated into a\ndynamic and vibrant research environment), but also for their supervisors (who\ntypically benefit from their students\u2019 productivity and enthusiasm in the laboratory),\nand for wider society (which benefits from enhanced student knowledge, skills\nand expertise and from the findings of undergraduate projects). The more\nopportunities undergraduate students have to engage in ongoing research, and\nthe more opportunities early-career researchers (e.g. postgraduate students and\nResearch Fellows) have to mentor such students and refine their supervisory\nskills, the better! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr William Davies, Schools of Medicine and Psychology A major challenge in mental health research is to disseminate our emerging findings to relevant stakeholder groups \u2013 these include fellow academics, […]","protected":false},"author":1099,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-and-training","category-mental-health-and-society"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7swiU-rF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":827,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/mental-health\/an-undergraduate-students-experience-of-mental-health-research\/","url_meta":{"origin":1715,"position":0},"title":"An undergraduate student\u2019s experience of mental health research","author":"Chloe Sheldon","date":"9 November 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP) provides summer placements for Cardiff University undergraduates in the University research environment. 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