Child and adolescent psychiatry is a field of research that deals with how the brain, behavior, genes, social factors and environment are related to mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Our main goals
- Improve prevention, prognosis and treatment: Our focus is on the development and application of innovative methods for the prevention, prognosis and treatment of mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents.
- Diagnostics and early detection: Application and improvement of multimodal methods to identify the specific causes and transdiagnostic factors of disorders. This will optimize the diagnosis, early detection and treatment of mental disorders and developmental disorders in children and adolescents.
- Enabling quality of life and more equitable care: Increasing overall mental well-being across all life stages and reducing disparities in care by applying findings from epidemiological research and applied clinical research to develop optimized strategies for prevention, counseling and intervention.
Strategies for achieving our goals
- Longitudinal studies: Investigation of developmental processes using cross-sectional, longitudinal and epidemiological methods that take into account risks, resilience, protective factors, neurobiological factors, contextual factors and interventions.
- Multimodal research: Combining different research approaches to achieve a holistic understanding of mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders.
- Knowledge application: Networking and maintaining local, national and international partnerships (LOOP, NCCR, URPPs, Horizon) to translate research results into effective clinical solutions.
- Mentoring and collaboration: Supporting young researchers in their training by providing excellent research guidance and building close relationships at national and international level.
