Funding: The future in mind
14 April 2008
Professor Anke Ehlers (Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London) and colleagues have been awarded funding to build on their earlier work on post-traumatic stress disorder and social phobia. Previously, the researchers developed treatments to help people with these disorders to overcome psychological processes that can prevent recovery. They will now modify these treatments (for example, by developing self-study programmes) and explore the mechanisms through which they work. The group’s work is also focused on the prevention of disorders - researchers will follow people newly recruited to the emergency services to identify ways to predict who will develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
Professor Glyn Lewis (University of Bristol) has been awarded a project grant to study the issues early in life that can increase the chance of becoming depressed as a teenager. Among other factors, researchers will explore the effect of substance abuse and maternal depression on developing depression at the age of 17, using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort.
Image: An artist’s interpretation of depression; Adrian Cousins, Wellcome Images