American psychologist and academic Michael Meinzer chose Imhay due to the high quality of its mental health studies and its extensive collaborative network within Chile. As a result of this academic exchange, the professional, together with a team from Imhay, has already begun to analyze data from a sample of young university students living with this disorder.

Dr. Michael Meinzer

Dr. Michael Meinzer, an academic at the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and director of the Young Adult & Adolescent ADHD Services Lab, has dedicated part of his research work to the study and treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as developing interventions to reduce anxiety, depression, and suicide in schoolchildren.

Because Chicago is a city with a high rate of Latino population from the Caribbean, Central and South America, the scientist felt the need to travel to one of these countries to learn about the local experience in mental health and also to get closer to the culture. He found out who was working with children and adolescents «and Imhay was one of the first websites I found,» says Dr. Meinzer. «I saw all the projects and the entire team that makes up the Nucleus and I was impressed by the caliber of what they were doing in the field of mental health, how collaborative this center was, and that they were working with scientists from different universities throughout the country. So I was excited.»

The researcher contacted the director of Imhay, Dr. Vania Martínez, who welcomed his proposal to do a research stay in Chile for the entire month of January. Here he met with researchers from our Nucleus, and also learned about the work of collaborating institutions such as the Todo Mejora (It Gets Better) Foundation, which is dedicated to the protection and support of LGBTIQA+ youth; and the Ministry of Health (Minsal), through the *4141 suicide prevention hotline.

«I met with people from the Minsal and accompanied Dr. Martínez when she did a training on suicide prevention,» recalls the American expert. «It was very interesting to be able to see who is attending the call center and the kind of difficulties they have when working. In addition, I was able to observe Vania solving some problems with them or teaching them how they could approach more complex situations or cases.»

Within his activities in Chile and thanks to the efforts made by Imhay’s collaborating researcher, Isidora Paiva, the academic also visited the Adolfo Ibáñez University to exchange experiences regarding mental health care in university settings, which is one of the areas of work that Dr. Meinzer develops at the University of Illinois, especially with young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

«I also had the opportunity to collaborate with young researchers from Imhay, with whom we have already started to analyze data from a sample of university students with ADHD. We are going to see if this condition increases the risk for depression and suicide attempts among Chilean students, and what factors can mitigate that risk or increase it, such as stress or social support,» says the foreign researcher. «I hope that this work that we are developing together with the Imhay team will soon bear fruit and that we will be able to develop a scientific publication that reports on the results obtained.»

As he explains, most of the published work on ADHD that he is aware of has been conducted in the United States, primarily in Caucasian samples. And although there have been efforts in the last decade to understand more about this disorder in Latino and African American populations, there is still little research on how this condition develops outside of his country.

«This has been a very important experience for me, and it is only the beginning. I would like to return and eventually initiate a different research project that incorporates the voice of students, teachers and mental health professionals who work in universities, to hear their experiences in addressing ADHD, because while statistics can tell us if there is an increased risk, the data does not tell us the whole story. That is why qualitative research is needed to really understand if the experience in Chile is different from that in the United States. For example, I am interested in knowing if the difficulties that students experience in Chile are the same as those that young Americans experience, or if the treatments that I have been employing in the United States could be applied in some Chilean universities. This is something that I would be interested in continuing to investigate and explore in depth,» says the researcher.