Youth-GEMs

Youth mental health is heavily burdened, with life-long enduring impact on European citizens and societies. Trajectories of mental health and illness in young people are assumed to be determined by interplay between genetic, epigenetic, and environmental risk impacting during development. However, direct evidence for this is sparse and scientific progress is challenged. We recently initiated substantial advances enabling us to create necessary breakthroughs at the most pressing needs and challenges. Aiming to significantly reduce mental suffering and illness among European youth within the next 5-10 years, we will provide 1) the world?s first, evidence-based knowledge base of functional (epi)genomics of the developing post-natal human brain in direct relation to developmental trajectories of trans-syndromal phenotypes of mental illness, providing improved risk markers and actionable biological targets, 2) reliable predictive models, while identifying gene-environment interplay, as well as actionable markers of trajectories of mental (ill)health in young people through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based and inference-based analyses of unprecedented sets of longitudinal general population datasets, 3) the first comprehensive, validated set of evidence-based behavioural, environmental, biological, and psychological-informed instruments for the robust quantitative clinical assessment of mental health for help-seeking young people aged 12-24 years, harmonised across European clinical settings, and 4) youth- and clinician-empowering AI-driven instruments for early (self)detection, prediction and monitoring of mental ill-health trajectories in youth. Our multidisciplinary consortium is uniquely equipped and positioned to enforce the necessary breakthroughs for significant reduction of mental illness and suffering of young people, and to translate our findings into clinical innovation and life-long impact in Europe and beyond.

2022

2027