Wellcome Trust: Mental Health Award: Understanding How Anxiety- and Trauma-related Problems Develop, Persist and Resolve
Deadline: November 14, 2023
Category: Anxiety, Trauma,
Wellcome’s mental health strategic aim is to drive a transformative change in our ability to intervene as early as possible in the course of anxiety, depression and psychosis, in ways that reflect the priorities and needs of people who experience these problems.
This call will fund research that advances scientific understanding of the causal mechanisms through which brain, body and environment interact over time in the development, persistence and resolution of anxiety- and trauma-related disorders. Existing evidence suggests that many factors contribute to the development, persistence and resolution of anxiety-related problems. For example:
Genetics
Childhood maltreatment
Traumatic life experiences
Poverty
Negative social experiences such as bullying
Environmental exposures such as air pollution.
However, we know much less about the biological, psychological and social causal mechanisms underpinning how and why these factors influence the trajectory of these problems over time. With this funding opportunity, we want to move beyond correlational evidence to a deeper consideration of the causal mechanisms underpinning anxiety-related problems. This mechanistic understanding will help us develop new and improved ways to predict, identify and intervene as early as possible.