The Global Alliance for Living Evidence on aNxiety, depressiOn and pSychosis, or GALENOS project, launched today in central London. The meeting, which was attended by 35 people from around the globe was the first of this three-year project that is aiming to transform future mental health research.
GALENOS, supported by the Wellcome Trust, is an international collaboration led by Professor Andrea Cipriani from Oxford University, and will make it easier for everyone, including patients, funders and researchers to access and review all the scientific literature that is published every day about three different mental illnesses.
“This is a unique opportunity for evidence synthesis in mental health to not only foster research but also to produce better outcomes for all patients.” Says Cipriani. “We are starting an exciting journey to understand the mechanisms behind what works and what doesn’t work about pharmacological and non-pharmacoligical treatments, diagnosis and prognostic tools in depression, anxiety and psychosis.”
The GALENOS project will create a continuously updated and comprehensive online catalogue of the best scientific literature, meaning the mental health science community can better identify the research questions that most urgently need to be answered and set these as priorities for research.
The online catalogue will be accessible by anyone and will collect data from different types of studies from all around the world. This innovative resource will help the mental health science community to move away from the usual trial and error approach to mental health research towards a more targeted approach.
“Large public funders often look for the highest quality research projects to support and will use rigorous evaluation processes to ensure that the grants they are giving are excellent science. But that doesn’t allow for priority setting – just because it’s the best science does not mean it’s the most important area within mental health science,” says Matthias Egger from the University of Bern, Switzerland, who chairs the Swiss National Science Foundation. “Priority setting, which GALENOS will help with, is extremely important.”
“If you make decisions together, you will make better decisions.”
The GALENOS project is a collaboration between experts and organisations from around the world. But perhaps most importantly, it includes experts by experience, so that the people most impacted by mental illnesses can have a voice in steering the project.
“If you make decisions together you will make better decisions.” Says Karla Soares-Weiser, Editor-in-Chief of the Cochrane Library. “One of the things that excites me about this project is how collaborative it is. The decision was made to involve lived experience from the beginning, Meaning that we are going to be doing things that will be most helpful for the people who will be most affected. There are many challenges, but by sitting and working together, and because we are allowed to be innovative and take risks, will help us provide better support.”
