Rationale: Personalized medicine, a medical model that separates people into different groups and then tailors treatment to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease, has greatly improved the treatment of some diseases, such as cancer, in recent years. In order for mental illness to benefit from this approach, we need to find out how best to separate people into different groups. This study will use genetics to help to answer this question.
Aims: We will use data collected as part of the UK biobank to carry out this study. This will include information about traits which sometimes go hand in hand with mental health disorders, such as loneliness, as well as genetic data. The aims of this study are to (i) to investigate, using genetics, whether there is a biological overlap between traits such as loneliness, and major mental health disorders such as major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and (ii) to investigate whether biological overlap between mental health disorders is explained by some of the features they share, such as cognitive impairment.
Duration: We expect that once we have received the data necessary to conduct this research, it will take 2 years to complete. At the end of this time, we aim to have published two papers sharing our findings with the wider scientific community.
Public Health Impact: The results of this study will help to answer important questions about the clinical overlap between mental health disorders, including which shared features are due to a biological overlap between the disorders. This information will help to advance research into using personalised medicine in psychiatry.