Marion Leboyer, Paris, France (Paris Est Créteil University, AP-HP, Inserm, Fondation FondaMental)
Peter Falkai, Munich, Germany (Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy)
Elisabeth Binder, Munich, Germany (Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry)
Mental disorders represent a global economic challenge. Over 80 million European citizens of all ages (18% of the general population) will suffer from mental disorders during their lifetime.
In France, serious under-investment in mental health infrastructure and staff shortages contrast sharply with progress in research and innovation. This situation has pushed up the total costs associated with mental disorders in France. They represent the highest direct healthcare cost: 23 billion euros (15% of total expenditure).
In France, Expert Centers Network is made up of 53 teams specializing in patient care.
In Germany, six Centers of Excellence have been set up, covering diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, degenerative disorders, lung disease and infectious diseases. The German Center for Mental Health (DZPG) has been funded since May 2023. It comprises six centers across Germany and around 250 researchers, whose tasks are to conduct translational research and introduce innovation into everyday clinical care.
The French and German systems represent unique infrastructures in Europe, improving prognosis, reducing costs and strengthening research and innovation. The ambition is to join forces through a consortium. The objectives are numerous.
- Facilitate data exchange, fund positions for professors, early-career researchers or residents, to enable them to start collaborative projects, or learn a particular technique.
- Provide access to existing data collections in France and Germany, through a cohort club. It will enable researchers to identify metadata relevant to their field of study, in a secure environment. Cutting-edge technologies will be used to explore biomarkers of mental disorders and develop diagnostic/prognostic tools.
- Align French and German cohorts, by continuing efforts to define common denominators (clinical, lifestyle, cognitive) and biological signatures (blood, brain imaging, electrophysiology, numerical variables), giving future researchers access to comparable, high-quality, multimodal data.
- Launch collaborative research projects on topics such as the discovery of environmental risk factors, the development of digital tools for diagnosis, monitoring and access to treatment, and/or immuno-psychiatry projects.
The consortium program is currently being finalized. It’s available here.
Don’t miss this event ! Your participation can be financed. To participate, send your CV and cover letter to federico.cevoli@fondation-fondamental.org.