World Mental Health Survey Initiative
- Cross-linking Danish research with Harvard-based consortium of psychiatric epidemiologist from 29 countries
The Niels Bohr Professorship aims to create a long-team collaboration between the World Mental Health (WMHS) Initiative and the National Center for Register-based Research, which will substantially increase the connectivity between Danish Researchers and the international community.
WMHS is designed to help countries carry out and analyze epidemiological surveys of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders. 29 developed and developing countries so far completed the WMH surveys. While Denmark has not completed a specialized survey of mental disorders, it has outstanding health registers. We will explore patterns of comorbidity in the Danish registers, and also in the WMHS in order to compare these two different types of epidemiology samples (i.e. registers, surveys).
Professor Ron Kessler is Co-Director of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative. He is also the Principal Investigator of the US National Comorbidity Survey, the first nationally representative survey of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders in the US. In addition to his epidemiological studies, Kessler is involved in evaluating a number of innovative programs for the prevention and treatment of mental illness in high-risk segments of the population. Finally, Dr Kessler is the Principal Investigator of the Harvard Medical School site for Army STARRS, a research program funded by the US Army and the National Institute of Mental Health that study risks and protective factors for suicide among army personnel.