Project description
The aetiology of child psychiatric symptoms
Many mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, may have their roots in early childhood. Half of mental illnesses are established before the age of 14. The EU-funded I-RISK project will pioneer a paradigm shift in intergenerational mental health research and provide unprecedented insights into the aetiology of child psychiatric symptoms. The project will identify causal intergenerational pathways linking parental risk factors to child psychiatric symptoms. It is the first study to apply cutting-edge genetically informed methods to identify intergenerational risk factors for child psychiatric symptoms. It will also consider the role of intermediate phenotypes, whether environmental (parenting) or biological (epigenetic and brain data). I-RISK will generate new genomic data and bring together four of the largest child cohorts in Europe.
Objective
Mental illnesses account for 32% of years lived with disability. Critically, 50% of mental illnesses are established before age 14 years. It is thus imperative to better understand the causes of early psychiatric symptoms in childhood if we are to design effective preventive interventions. Parental risk factors e.g. psychiatric disorders and substance use have consistently emerged as strong predictors of child psychiatric symptoms. However, we do not know whether such parental risk factors are causes or mere correlates of child symptoms and how this transmission of risk across generations occurs. The overarching aim of I-RISK is to identify causal intergenerational pathways linking parental risk factors to child psychiatric symptoms. I-RISK will implement and develop cutting-edge genetically informed methods to enable better causal inference in intergenerational research. Three work packages will address major limitations in state-of-the-art research: (i) no study to date has applied such causal inference methods to identify intergenerational risk factors for child psychiatric symptoms; (ii) the role of intermediate phenotypes, whether environmental (e.g. parenting) or biological (epigenetic and brain data), in explaining the intergenerational transmission of risk remains poorly understood; (iii) genetically informed intergenerational research is still in its infancy and key methodological developments are required to propel the field forward. I-RISK will generate new genomic data and bring together four of the largest child cohorts in Europe (pooled N >100,000). These cohorts feature genetic data in children and parents as well as unique data on environmental and biological intermediate phenotypes. I-RISK will pioneer a paradigm shift in intergenerational mental health research and provide unprecedented insights into the aetiology of child psychiatric symptoms, with the ultimate goal of breaking the intergenerational cycle of mental illness and inequalities.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
WC1E 6BT London
United Kingdom