£4.3million for world-leading research into severe mental illness

Cardiff University will form part of a new Mental Health Platform Research Hub, which will advance the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of severe mental illness has been awarded a £4.3million grant from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and the Medical Research Council (MRC). The South Wales and South-West England (SW²) Hub will bring together an interdisciplinary network of world-leading researchers, from the GW4 Alliance universities of Cardiff, Bath , Bristol , and Exeter , alongside Swansea University , Adferiad Recovery , Bipolar UK , and people with lived experience, to accelerate impactful research into, and treatments for, severe mental conditions. The SW² Hub team will look to change this situation and improve the lives of people with psychotic disorders, by combining and analysing data acquired at scale, with machine learning and clustering approaches, to advance knowledge of the causes behind the development of severe mental illnesses. Research conducted at the Hub will also aim to improve the systems currently in place for the diagnosis of psychotic disorders which is currently based solely on descriptions of symptoms and behaviour. The team will develop more objective methods of diagnosis by using biopsychosocial measures such as genetics, cognitive tasks, brain imaging, markers in people's blood, as well as assessments of their development and social and cultural background. These more precise diagnoses will enable the development of better targeted treatments, aiming to replicate advances made within cancer care treatment.