About This Project

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

What are the underlying biological and environmental determinants that produce mental illness and dysfunction?

The Personal Genome Project enrolls participants, sequences their genomes, and collects other trait and environmental data. Mind First works closely with the PGP and plans to collect mental trait and health information from the thousands of volunteers who are enrolled in the PGP. The major goals of the project are to produce state-of-the-art web-based mental health surveys, to administer the surveys to PGP participants on an ongoing basis, and to integrate the resulting data with other PGP data. As with all PGP data, individual participant data will be published on the internet so that researchers worldwide are able to access and analyze them to decipher the complex roots of mental illness.

What is the significance of this project?

Mental illness and serious dysfunction are the most common and costly of all biomedical problems in developed countries. Twin, adoption, and other studies show that major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, panic and anxiety disorders, and other common mental problems are substantially hereditary. They also are underlying contributors to other common and serious social problems, including poverty, homelessness, crime and incarceration. Despite clear biological roots, major efforts to discover the underlying determinants of mental problems have been mostly unsuccessful, testifying to the complex interactions of biology and environments. Knowledge of causes will bring more effective treatments.

The mission of the Mind First Foundation is to discover the underlying biological and major environmental determinants of mental diseases and disorders, and to accelerate the development of targeted and effective treatments.

What are the goals of the project?

The initial phase of the project will be to produce and webify state-of-the-art mental health surveys. We have created surveys for physical traits, diseases, and disorders, based on SNOMED, ICD-9 and ICD-10 classifications. We will use a similar process to create and webify mental health surveys based on DSM5 and other criteria under the direction of Professor Kessler. The web-ready surveys will be administered to PGP participants on the internet on an ongoing basis, and the resulting data will be integrated with other associated biology and environmental data collected for PGP participants. These data will be made freely available on the internet for access and analysis by researchers around the world. The web-based survey system will also be portable and open source so that it can be adopted, modified, and used by other researchers throughout the world.