Mental Health Dresden-Leipzig contributes to "personalized medicine" by directly translating descriptive and analytic findings on risk and protective factors and disease trajectories into practice.
The Else Kröner-Fresenius Center for Digital Health is a joint cross-faculty initiative at the TUD, the University Hospital Dresden along with several other partners on the Dresden campus and focuses its research effort on the direct interface of the digital world to the patient thereby serving as a bridge between medical big data efforts and traditional biomedical engineering.
The Chair of Clinical Psychology and E-Mental Health has specialized in the development and evaluation of E-Mental Health (or digital/online) interventions.
BipoLife A3 Smartphone Study – the largest intervention study in German speaking countries studying the usefulness of a smartphone-based feedback loop triggering early interventions at the detection of warning signs for affective episodes in bipolar disorders.
BeMIND study – a longitudinal epidemiological study which aims to understand the course of health and illness over time and to identify risk and protective factors. To this end, the role of experience and behavior in everyday life is examined using new scientific methods (e.g. smartphone surveys, heart rate and movement measurement) to find out how these, in conjunction with family and other environmental influences and biological factors, influence mental and physical well-being.
NeuroFast is a multidisciplinary project in which twelve European research institutes of seven different nations are involved. The main research focus is to investigate the neurobiological foundation of substance abuse and addiction and to investigate whether those mechanisms play a part in eating certain food and in people with a disturbed eating behavior.
ICare is a project aiming to integrate technology in Mental Health Care. Even if the body of evidence for internet-based interventions for the prevention and treatment of mental health conditions has grown rapidly in the past decade, many countries have not implemented these effective approaches into health systems. By establishing a comprehensive model of promoting mental health in Europe researchers want to change this. The ICare online platform encompasses evidence-based risk detection, disease prevention, and treatment facilitation for common mental health disorders.
Ongoing pertinent projects at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the University of Leipzig include the investigation of internet-based therapies for physicians with traumatic work-related experiences (IPSA) and the development and evaluation of a self-help app for traumatized Syrian refugees (HELP@APP). Past studies have focused on internet therapy after cancer or suicide-related loss of a relative and for persons who have lost a child during pregnancy, an internet-based walking intervention for adipose pregnant women with prenatal depression and internet-based psychotherapy for binge eating disorder.
The Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Medicine and Public Health (ISAP) has expertise in digital health research, most notably MoodGYM.de – a cluster-randomized control study aiming for the development, evaluation and implementation of a behavioral-therapeutic online self-management program for persons with mild to moderate depressive disorders in a German general practitioners' setting (funding: AOK-Bundesverband), AgE-health.de – improving care of late-life depression: acceptability, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the web-based self-management "trauer@ktiv" program (funding: BMBF) , and @ktiv-rollout, a study on the implementation of self-help-strengthening online coaches in various treatment settings (funding: AOK-Bundesverband).
The Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy is conducting Pro-HEAD (PROmoting Help-seeking using E-technology for ADolescents) a BMBF-funded consortium (2017-2021; funding stream: Child and Adolescent Health "Healthy – for a lifetime") with the aim of developing, implementing and evaluating special internet-based interventions that promote the mental wellbeing of children and adolescents, prevent the manifestation of mental illness/disorders and promote help-seeking among children and adolescents with mental problems, and to gain insights into the predictors and obstacles of help-seeking. Other relevant projects at the department include evaluations of online support services during the Covid-19 pandemic for cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD and a group-chat application in psychiatric outpatient clinic of Leipzig University.
