School of Public Health

Mental illness places a considerable burden on society, the economy and the people affected. In order to significantly improve the mental health of citizens, today's symptom-based diagnoses must be supplemented by biological criteria that take individual and gender-specific differences into account. In addition, social perceptions and competences in dealing with mental illness must be taken into consideration.

The interdisciplinary research network Re-MEND (Building REsilience against MEntal illness during ENDocrine-sensitive life stages), which is funded by the European Union as part of the Horizon Europe programme, is therefore researching the endocrinological basis of mental illness, its interaction with environmental factors as well as the related preconceptions and skills that exist within society. The aim of Re-MEND is to better protect vulnerable staff, people and groups in critical life stages (childhood, puberty, peripartum, transition to old age) by identifying protective and risk factors. Susceptibility to mental illness in these stages is strongly influenced by changes in hormonal signalling.

The sub-project at Bielefeld University (WP9) is researching the perceptions of mental illness and competences among citizens and healthcare professionals as well as the effects of various communication materials on the topic. The main focus lies on the perception of depression. To that end a population-representative survey covering four countries, interviews with healthcare professionals as well as group discussions with staff and people from vulnerable groups will be conducted using an experimental design. In addition, training and further educational workshops with medical professionals and researchers will be employed. Furthermore, recommendations on early detection and prevention for those affected from the vulnerable groups will be developed.

Besides Bielefeld University a total of 15 consortium partners from Germany, Sweden, Italy, Finland, the USA, Bangladesh and Northern Ireland are involved in the network. It is coordinated by Uppsala University in Sweden. More information on the research network can be found at: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101057604 and https://www.helsinki.fi/en/projects/re-mend.

The project is funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the grant number 101057604.

Interviews on the objectives of the sub-projects can be found here:
In Focus | Re-MEND | University of Helsinki