Background: In mental health science, there has been frustratingly slow process in understanding and developing new treatments for anxiety, depression and psychosis, as well as in predicting which treatments will work for whom and in what contexts. To intervene early and deliver optimal and personalised care to patients, we need to understand the underlying mechanisms of mental health conditions, develop safe and effective interventions that target these mechanisms, and improve our knowledge in timely diagnosis and reliable prediction of symptom trajectories. Better synthesis of existing evidence is one way to reduce waste and improve efficiency in research towards these ends. Living systematic reviews produce rigorous, up-to-date and informative evidence summaries that are particularly important where research is emerging rapidly, current evidence is uncertain, and new findings might change policy or practice. Supported by Wellcome, the Global Alliance for Living Evidence on aNxiety, depressiOn and pSychosis (GALENOS) tackles the challenges of mental health science research by cataloguing and evaluating the full spectrum of relevant scientific research including both human and preclinical studies. GALENOS will also allow the international mental health community—including patients, carers, clinicians, researchers, policy makers, industry and funders—to better identify the research questions that most urgently need to be answered. The ultimate aim of GALENOS is to improve patients’ outcomes in real world settings, by fostering innovation and accelerating growth in mental healthcare in the UK and globally.

Speaker:

Andrea Cipriani is Professor of Psychiatry and NIHR Research Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. His main interest in psychiatry is evidence-based mental health and his research focuses on the evaluation of treatments in psychiatry, mainly major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. His research in the methodology of evidence synthesis has now a specific focus on individual patient data network meta-analysis and data science, trying to assess the validity, breadth, structure and interpretation of innovative statistical and machine learning approaches to better inform the decision-making process between patients and clinicians and personalise treatment indications in routine clinical care. Prof Cipriani is currently the Director of the NIHR Oxford cognitive health Clinical Research Facility and of the Data Science Theme of the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, Director of Global Alliance for Living Evidence in Anxiety, Depression and Psychosis (GALENOS), Lead of the Oxford Precision Psychiatry Lab, and the Editor in Chief of BMJ Mental Health. Twitter account: @And_Cipriani