RE-MEND

RE-MEND is an EU Horizon Europe research project that aims to generate new knowledge on the prevention of mental illness. VA is one of 15 partners, who will be involved in maximising citizen engagement in the project through communication, focus groups and citizen science. The five-year interdisciplinary project runs from January 2023 to December 2027.

Mental illness is one of the greatest societal challenges of our time. It is one of the most common causes of sick leave and increasingly affects young people as early as during puberty. But healthcare today is largely focused on treating the symptoms of mental illness, rather than prevention. The aim of RE-MEND is to produce better strategies to protect vulnerable individuals from mental illness during sensitive life stages and to decrease stigma associated with mental health issues.

The Building Resilience against Mental illness during Endocrine-sensitive life stage (RE-MEND) project, coordinated by Uppsala University, will pursue an interdisciplinary approach to address current gaps and challenges by:

1. focusing on four critical life stages at which an individual’s susceptibility to mental illness is strongly influenced by changes in hormonal signaling: early life, puberty, the period around childbirth, and transition into old age.
2. integrating data from large population-based longitudinal cohort studies, allowing for discovery of early risks and protective factors that influence mental states in the general population across these life stages.
3. integrating biological, medical and social aspects. For example, findings in human data will be complemented by experimental studies to establish correlative and causative links leading to a mechanistic understanding of mental health and illness.
4. using advanced biostatistics as well as machine learning and artificial intelligence for identification of possible biomarkers and novel drug targets.  data integration and biomarker and drug target discovery.
5. combining the biological approaches with communication science studies to investigate how the project’s findings can be used to change medical practices and reduce stigma against affected individuals.

VA’s involvement in RE-MEND includes:

Project Partners

• Uppsala University, Sweden (Coordinator)
• Bielefeld University, Germany
• Fondazione Telethon, Italy
• International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh
• Karlstad University, Sweden
• Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
• Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Germany
• Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA
• Stockholm University, Sweden
• Ulster University, Northern Ireland
• Umeå University, Sweden
• University of Cologne, Germany
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• University of Milan, Italy
• University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, USA
• VA (Public and Science), Sweden

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