This is the submitted version of a work that was accepted for publication in: The Lancet Psychiatry. A definitive version was subsequently published in The Lancet Psychiatry 2.11 (2015), DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00332-6Mental and brain disorders represent the greatest health burden to Europe—not only for directly affected individuals, but also for their caregivers and the wider society. They incur substantial economic costs through direct (and indirect) health-care and welfare spending, and via productivity losses, all of which substantially affect European development. Funding for research to mitigate these effects lags far behind the cost of mental and brain disorders to society. Here, we describe a comprehensive, coordinated mental health research agenda for Europe and worldwide. This agenda was based on systematic reviews of published work and consensus decision making by multidisciplinary scientific experts and affected stakeholders (more than 1000 in total): individuals with mental health problems and their families, health-care workers, policy makers, and funders. We generated six priorities that will, over the next 5–10 years, help to close the biggest gaps in mental health research in Europe, and in turn overcome the substantial challenges caused by mental disordersThe research leading to these results has received
funding from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7, 2007–13)
under grant agreement number 282586, and from the National R&D Internationalisation
Programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under Reference ACI-PRO-2011-
1080. TW and GT acknowledge financial support from the UK National Institute for Health
Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre and Dementia Unit awarded to South London and
Maudsley National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust in partnership with King’s College
London. GT is supported by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research
and Care South London at King’s College London Foundation Trust. TW is supported by an NIHR
Senior Investigator Award
Despite the high impact of mental disorders in society, European mental health research is at a critical situation with a relatively low level of funding, and few advances been achieved during the last decade. The development of coordinated research policies and integrated research networks in mental health is lagging behind other disciplines in Europe, resulting in lower degree of cooperation and scientific impact.To reduce more efficiently the burden of mental disorders in Europe, a concerted new research agenda is necessary. The ROAMER (Roadmap for Mental Health Research in Europe) project, funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, aims to develop a comprehensive and integrated mental health research agenda within the perspective of the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 programme, with a translational goal, covering basic, clinical and public health research.ROAMER covers six major domains: infrastructures and capacity building, biomedicine, psychological research and treatments, social and economic issues, public health and well-being. Within each of them, state-of-the-art and strength, weakness and gap analyses were conducted before building consensus on future research priorities. The process is inclusive and participatory, incorporating a wide diversity of European expert researchers as well as the views of service users, carers, professionals and policy and funding institutions.
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