The genetics of mental health: Episode 1

Cathryn Lewis is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology & Statistics at King’s College London, where she is Head of Department at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, She co-chairs the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Major Depressive Disorder Working group, an international collaborative group dissecting the genetics of depression. She leads the NIHR Maudsley BRC Biomarkers and Genomics theme focussing on translational research establishing the evidence base to use genomics in a clinical setting. Her academic training is in mathematics and statistics, and she has been involved in genetic studies since her PhD. Her multi-disciplinary research group identifies and characterises genetic variants conferring risk of disease, including depression, schizophrenia, and stroke. A major focus is risk assessment, determining how the polygenic component of mental health disorders can be measured accurately and communicated effectively.

Andrew McIntosh is a psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh. He co-chairs the Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) with Cathryn Lewis and leads the Generation Scotland Expert Working Group for Psychiatric Disorders. He seeks to identify the causes and consequences of depression using genomic approaches and by linking to large and routinely collected health datasets.