MENTBEST: New funded research project on mental health

Protecting mental health in times of change

We are happy to announce ‘MENTBEST’, a new important research project on mental health funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme that was awarded to the Psychology Department of CITY College, University of York Europe Campus and its research centre, the South-East European Research Centre (SEERC). Our team will be led by Prof. Ana Vivas, Professor and Departmental Research Director at our Psychology Department and Professor Lina Gega, Professor of Mental Health at York Medical School and Inaugural Director of the Institute of Mental Health Research at the University of York.

MENTBEST aims at mitigating the negative impacts of transformation and seizing new opportunities: Global trends such as war, economic crisis, climate change, migration, digitalisation, pandemics, ageing and demographic change, place increasing stress and pressure on European societies to adapt to fast-changing situations. These stressors can trigger mental health problems for significant parts of the population. These problems include both non-clinical aspects (mental distress, sub-diagnostic depressive symptoms, reduced quality of life and well-being, “burnout”, anxiety syndromes) and clinical aspects (mental disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders according to ICD-10, increased suicide risk). Particular vulnerable groups within the general population (e.g., migrants/refugees, younger people, older people, long-term unemployed, those with mental disorders) are especially at risk of finding themselves disadvantaged by dramatic societal change, of experiencing particular stressors, and of suffering (further) negative impacts on their wellbeing, including mental health.

MENTBEST will develop, implement, validate and evaluate a Comprehensive Multifaceted Community-based Intervention (“COMBINA”), based on the proven EAAD intervention programme, but adapted and broadened for the specific needs of the vulnerable groups (above), and for non-clinical mental health challenges as outlined above, including sub-diagnostic depressive and anxiety symptoms, burnout and mental distress, as associated with dramatic societal change. COMBINA will be implemented in five model regions in five different European countries, which vary greatly in terms of geography, socioeconomic conditions, and mental health ecosystem (Ireland, Spain, Albania, Estonia, Greece) and be evaluated with a special focus on the vulnerable groups within the model regions. An innovative addition is the RCT of app-based self-monitoring and self-management technologies for mental health, which use AI and n=1 longitudinal statistics to create individualised predictive models and provide users preventive and self-management support.

Partners:

MENTBEST is led by the European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD, Germany), and includes a strong consortium of organisations :