Psychiatry (Research)

The Division of Psychiatry is internationally recognised for its research and teaching.

We focus on the mechanisms underlying the development of major psychiatric disorders, including:

• autism and learning difficulties

• bipolar disorder

• depression and mood disorders

• dementia

• schizophrenia

• cognition and behaviour

Research expertise

We have a particular expertise in longitudinal, clinical and biological studies of clinical and population-based cohort studies of people with or at high risk of mental disorders. The studies we have recruited or have worked on include:

• Edinburgh High Risk Studies of young people at high genetic cognitive risk for schizophrenia

• bipolar disorder and other related conditions

• Generation Scotland - a family and population-based study of 24,000 individuals recruited from the general population of Scotland

• UK Biobank - a UK- and population-based study of more than half a million people from across England, Wales and Scotland

In psychiatric genetics, we take part in international genome-wide association studies of psychiatric disorders - including the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and ENIGMA that seeks to identify the genetic causes of psychiatric disorders.

Our work then uses the findings in order to identify the environmental risk factors and neurobiological mechanisms of mental disorders, using genetic factors as causal anchors.

Research methods

Our work relies on a number of genomic technologies, including:

• genome-wide association studies (GWAS)

• DNA sequencing

• DNA methylation and expression analysis

• proteomics

• structural and functional neuroimaging

In collaboration with others, we also work on stem-cell, cultured tissue (including organoids) and in vivo models of psychiatric disorders and we are also involved in a number of clinical trials of novel interventions.