Two major Stan Perron Charitable Foundation grants to boost youth mental health research

Pictured: Perron Institute team leading the PGx-ADAPT project funded by the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation, including SPARRC directors Sean Hood and Michael Kyron

The Suicide Prevention and Resilience Research Centre (SPARRC) has captured a significant grant from the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation, with SPARRC leadership also playing a key role in a second, wider Perron Institute grant — together backing new work to improve how young Western Australians are matched to mental health treatment.

Dr Michael Kyron: Right Care, Right Time

Dr Michael Kyron, Interim Co-Director of SPARRC, has been awarded a People grant, which will fund his salary over the next five years to lead the Right Care, Right Time initiative.

The project aims to bring better routine monitoring into Western Australian youth mental health services. By enabling precision-medicine-enhanced care, Right Care, Right Time will help clinicians match young people to the right treatment the first time around — rather than the trial-and-error approach that too often prolongs distress.

Just as importantly, better routine monitoring will make it possible to identify early when a treatment isn't working, so care can be adjusted more responsively instead of waiting for a scheduled review.

Dr Kyron will lead this work over the next five years, building WA's capacity for more personalised, responsive youth mental health care.

Professor Sean Hood: PGx-ADAPT

SPARRC co-director Professor Sean Hood has also been successful with a Partnership grant, supporting the PGx-ADAPT project — a three-year initiative to design and pilot a model for introducing pharmacogenetics (PGx)-guided antidepressant prescribing across Western Australia. This project will be led by the Perron Institute to expand on their innovative and pioneering work in pharmacogenomics.

Pharmacogenetics looks at how a person's genetic makeup affects their response to medication. PGx-ADAPT, targeting Western Australians aged 16–24, will generate feasibility data across both metropolitan and rural WA settings to address the system-level barriers to implementing pharmacogenetics in everyday care.

"Mental health conditions such as depression are the leading cause of disease burden among young people in WA, but more than half do not respond well to initial treatment," Professor Hood said. "The result is prolonged distress, increased suicide risk and avoidable strain on the healthcare system — a problem that's even more acute in rural and remote areas, where limited access to specialist services adds to the challenge."

The project builds on findings from the earlier GENE-YD study and will be co-designed with young people, community representatives, GPs and policymakers, with the goal of developing a culturally responsive, ethical and scalable model for PGx-guided prescribing in WA.

Read the full press release on the PGx-ADAPT grant via the Perron Institute.

Building on a shared direction

Together, these two grants reflect a shared thread running through SPARRC's work: using better data and genetic insight to help young Western Australians get the right mental health treatment sooner. Dr Kyron's routine monitoring work and Professor Hood's pharmacogenetics research are complementary pieces of a broader push toward more precise, responsive youth mental health care in WA.