The National Center for Register-based Research (NCRR) was established in 2000 at Aarhus University under the leadership of Professor Preben Bo Mortensen and funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. Research activities at NCRR are mainly financed by external research grants.

During the last twenty years, NCRR has become a world-leading centre in psychiatric epidemiology, contributing to the integration of register-based research between health sciences and social sciences.  

Today, NCRR has approximately 50 staff members who cover a broad area of research expertise, ranging from medicine and statistics to pharmacology, sociology and psychology. 

Over the years, research has been extended to include bio-banked samples, thereby expanding to large-scale population-based genetic studies, as well as studies of gene-environment interactions associated with developing psychiatric disorders. 

The main perspective of studies carried out at NCRR is to provide a better life for each individual suffering from a mental disorder – and perhaps, in the future, even find ways to prevent the development of severe mental illnesses.