The NSW Child Development Study is a longitudinal study of child mental health and wellbeing in a cohort of more than 90,000 children growing up in NSW, with parental information available for ~80% of these children providing an intergenerational perspective on risk and resilience at various stages of development.

The NSW-CDS uses a combination of administrative records of services provided by health, education, child protection, and justice departments, linked with cross-sectional assessments for the children obtained in early childhood (the 2009 Australian Early Development Census, administered at age ~5 years when the children began formal schooling) and middle childhood (the 2015 Middle Childhood Survey, administered at age ~11 years when the children were in School Year 6), to determine developmental pathways leading to later mental health, education, and justice outcomes emerging in adolescence and early adulthood.

The study is led by Professor Melissa Green from the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, in the School of Clinical Medicine (SoCM, UNSW) in collaboration with other researchers from the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW, the Queensland University of Technology, Griffith University, Monash University, University of Western Australia, University of Otago, and in partnership with Government agencies including the NSW Department of Education, NSW Ministry of Health, and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice.

This project was initiated with funding from the Australian Research Council (Linkage Project LP110100150, with the NSW Ministry of Health, NSW Department of Education, and the NSW Department Communities and Justice representing the Linkage Project Partners) and the Australian Rotary Health (Mental Health Research Grant 104090).