Bridging Medical Research and Precision Psychiatry

This project aims to explore the possibilities to bridge the gap between medical research and clinical translation in mental health disorders via an integrative approach which includes neurobiology, neuroimaging, ‘omics’, and individual clinical / behavioural characteristics.

One of the main problems the world is facing now is the ever-increasing number of mental health disorders. Recent reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) state that 1 in every 8 people in the world lives with a mental disorder. Despite tremendous scientific and technological advancement, treating mental health disorders is still challenging. This is because each patient with a mental disorder experiences a unique pattern of symptoms caused by various processes that interact over time.

Considering such heterogeneity and individual patient differences, the new field of precision psychiatry addresses this issue by utilizing a multimodal approach to understand and treat mental health disorders. In precision psychiatry, multiple sources of data, such as neurobiology, neuroimaging, electrophysiology, ‘omics’ (genomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, etc.), and clinical and behavioural characteristics of an individual patient, are integrated, analysed, and interpreted together. Such an integrated approach can provide a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms of mental disorders, leading to personalized treatment approaches.

This project aims to develop such an integrative approach for major mental health disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia. The project will be accomplished by integrating medical research discoveries, scientific findings, and results related to the above-mentioned mental health disorders. Discoveries and findings from multiple dimensions, such as neurobiology, neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, ‘omics, and clinical and behavioral characteristics of mental health disorders, will be studied during Sciathon, and possible integrated approaches to diagnose, treat, and monitor the mental health disorders will be presented as results. The practical issues with integrating the findings and their translation to clinics will be comprehensively studied and reported. 

Image courtesy of Ravichandran Rajkumar

Skills for Project