Vision: This NBI Team aims to leverage the unique Danish health registers in order to undertake a comprehensive mapping of the burden of mental disorders in Denmark.

Background: Everyone, all over the world, deserves to live a long life in full health. In order to achieve this goal, we need a comprehensive picture of what disables and causes death across countries, time, age, and sex. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) provides a tool to quantify health loss from hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors, so that health systems can be improved and disparities can be eliminated. In order to map disease burden, key disease frequency estimates are required (e.g. incidence, prevalence, mortality, recovery). The statistical methods required to handle these data have advanced considerably in recent years. The NBP will link existing skills and resources within the NCRR with Harvey Whiteford and his team of researchers based at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, and the University of Queensland.

Scope of new work: UQ and AU based researchers will commence the work of collating previously published mental health frequency estimates from Denmark, and identify ’gaps’ in the evidence base. By way of example, NCRR-staff recently published a paper that provided the first register-based estimates for mortality among those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. After 3 years the NIB team will generate new register-based estimates for missing mental health frequency measures. Using the latest version of the GBD software, they will derive Disability Adjusted Life Years for a comprehensive range of mental disorders in Denmark. This will explore new methods to deal with mental and physical disorder multi-morbidity.

Key co-investigators: Thomas Munk Laursen (NCRR), Preben Bo Mortensen (NCRR), Harvey Whiteford (UQ).