The newly founded nationwide German Centre for Mental Health (DZPG) begins active collaborative research this month. Together with the leading centre at LMU Munich, Augsburg is one of six locations nationwide. “This is one of the most comprehensive grants ever for psychiatry and psychotherapy in Germany,” explains Prof. Dr Alkomiet Hasan. Hasan is professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Augsburg and medical director of the Augsburg District Hospital and was instrumental in securing Augsburg’s application for the new centre.

Evidenced-based psychiatry and psychotherapy in focus     

“In Augsburg, we will be researching, among other things, the treatment of depression and non-affective psychoses, particularly in young people,” says Hasan. “A large part of our research will be taken up with evidence-based medicine, where we plan to examine how treatments for depression and psychoses should start and end. In particular, there are still many open questions about the necessary duration of therapy, medication, and psychotherapy.” The aim is to develop practical guidelines and to train doctors, students, and therapists in model projects and then review what effect the training has. “We are working with a stepped care model, which involves both those affected and their close relatives,” says Hasan.

As with all projects at the Centres for Health Research, the Augsburg project is inter-institutional and interdisciplinary. In addition to Hasan’s Chair of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Augsburg researchers from epidemiology, general medicine, medical psychology, the Chair of Data Management and Clinical Decision Support at the Faculty of Medicine, as well as the District Clinics of Swabia are involved. As depression is a disease that affects a great many people, researchers will be working with data from very large cohorts in the context of clinical studies.

Profitable co-operation

Augsburg researchers are working together with researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians- University in Munich (LMU), with the most important cooperation partners there being the Clinic of Psychiatry and the Chair of General Medicine. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University Hospital rechts der Isar, the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry Munich, and Helmholtz Munich are also involved.

Many infrastructure projects such as the management of test subjects, the implementation of clinical studies, and biobanking take place together. The university locations complement each other in this respect, with a research MRI located in Munich, for example, where work on neurostimulation will take place. Augsburg University Medicine, on the other hand, has expertise in clinical research and data management, with medical informatics one of the main focus areas of the young faculty.

Optimal research conditions

“The German Centres for Health Research create optimal conditions for researching common diseases and their treatment and transferring the findings into patient care. We are very proud that Augsburg University Medicine is part of this important research centre,” says Prof. Dr Sabine Doering-Manteuffel, president of the University of Augsburg. “Participation in this network is an exemplary way of linking the research focus of medical information sciences with clinical research in the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy, which is a key objective of Augsburg University Medicine,” adds Prof. Dr Martina Kadmon, dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

“In each individual centre, the best scientists from university and non-university research institutions work together in an interdisciplinary way to bring new medical research results into practice quickly,” says the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The German Centres for Health Research pursue a research strategy that complements and links all previous research activities on the respective disease. In each case, all locations are networked with one another. The new German Centre for Mental Health has received government funding for an initial two years. However, the aim is to make the funding permanent. In addition to Munich/Augsburg, the other sites are Berlin/Potsdam, Bochum/Marburg, Halle/Jena/Magdeburg, Mannheim/Heidelberg/Ulm and Tübingen.

German Centres for Health Research

Following an international two-stage selection and evaluation process, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has since 2011 funded four Centres for Health Research at a total of 80 locations. The centres conduct research in infectious diseases (DZIF), cardiovascular diseases (DZHK), lung diseases (DZL), and cancer (DKTK). The Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD) have been in existence since 2009.