Severe mental health disorders like schizophrenia have an enormous impact on quality of life. Up to 40% of people with schizophrenia will not respond to drug treatments. These individuals have high rates of death and can be in the hospital for very long periods of time. We need more information about the following with respect to schizophrenia treatment: are there certain factors (for example, gender, age or genetics) that contribute to not responding to treatment? To answer this question, we studied individuals with schizophrenia. In these individuals, we will look for factors that are linked with not responding to treatment.
An example of a potential finding might be that people with schizophrenia who are female, of an older age, or have a certain genetic marker, may be more likely to not respond to treatment. This information can be used to develop tests that will help identify people at risk of not responding to a treatment before it is ever given, in order to tailor more aggressive (or different) treatment plans.
Successful completion of this proposal will highly impact our understanding of treatments in mental health, and could reduce health care costs and most importantly, reduce the suffering in individuals with these disorders. There are millions of Europeans with a mental health disorder and a high proportion of them will not respond to treatment. If we can figure out earlier that someone will not respond to a treatment, we can give them a better or different treatment sooner.