Understanding and breaking the chain of disrupted sleep and mental disorders

Mental disorders will be the number one health burden of our society worldwide in 2030.

The top three among these are respectively anxiety disorders, insomnia and depression, together good for two third of all mental disorders.

Genome-wide association studies [1, 2], prospective studies, meta-analyses [3, 4] and experimental studies [5, 6] all confirm that insomnia is key to the underlying biological mechanisms of the other two disorders. Insomnia is the primary transdiagnostic factor determining their risk, severity, chronicity and relapse.

Since prevention is required to combat the worldwide burden of mental disorders [7], our best strategy to do so is to understand and break the chain of insomnia and mental disorders.

Combining our most recent discoveries covering the full range of molecular neuroscience to large-scale health care implementation, our team will unravel the biological mechanisms of this chain and utilise and optimise markers to identify people at risk for immediate stratification into both scalable combined sleep and circadian eHealth intervention as well as studies on innovative pharmacological intervention.