Mental health disorders affect ~20% of the world’s population and explain one in five years lived with all-cause disability. The total costs of mental health problems are estimated at more than 4% of GDP (more than €600 billion) across the 27 EU countries and the United Kingdom. Among the identified causal factors, childhood trauma and other adverse childhood experiences (including physical/emotional neglect or abuse, domestic violence, parental alcoholism, and parental loss due to bereavement or separation is associated with a four-fold increase in risk for mental health.
Adult mental health therapies typically target the emotional consequences of childhood adversity (i.e. anxiety and mood difficulties), while failing to address its cognitive consequences (reduced general cognitive ability, memory, executive function, and social cognition). This is important because cognitive difficulties strongly predict social and occupational function/disability in mental health disorders. In particular, social cognition - the cognitive processes that underpin our ability to understand others’ thoughts and feelings so as to navigate the social world – strongly predicts both current and future levels of functioning, even after accounting for clinical symptom severity. The development of treatments targeting cognitive deficits associated with childhood trauma has been held back by the fact that, until recently, the mechanisms by which adversity impacts on cognition have been poorly understood.
SOCIAbLE exploits a highly novel treatment target identified by my recently completed ERC funded work. My ERC-funded ‘iRELATE’ study has led to significant advances in understanding the neurocognitive effects of childhood trauma.
The objectives of this research are (1) to target a novel cognitive pathway between early adversity and poor social function that is associated with mental health disorders but not addressed in current treatments. It does so by targeting the cognitive causes of those deficits that are not targeted in current clinical practice (2) it harnesses latest VR technology to simulate social interaction, an innovation that has enormous potential for translation into clinical use given its targeting of a major currently untreated cause of disability using a low-cost and scalable intervention.
