Population mental health problems require public health solutions.
Millions of Americans, especially our youth, are suffering from preventable psychiatric and mental health distress. The problem is growing. These changes signal a profound shift in the way that individuals interact with and respond to the social environment.
A public health approach is urgent; we cannot treat our way out of this problem.
OUR MISSION
The SPIRIT initiative invests in a public health approach to investigating physical and social environmental solutions to address increased rates of mental health problems in the US population across three domains:
Etiology
What changes to the physical and social environment matter, and how much?
Mechanism
How does the physical and social environment impact mental health?
Intervention
What do we do about it?
WHAT WE DO
Build a scientific home for better mental health
SPIRIT will convene scientists across the US, and internationally, to transform and accelerate scientific discoveries in mental health etiology, prevention and treatment through leadership and collaboration.
Connections and innovations will be fostered with a platform for lecture series, workshops, scientific symposia, grant writing development sessions, and works-in-progress feedback sessions.
Agenda and goal setting for areas of focus will be facilitated through an external advisory board comprised of senior and visionary leaders in psychiatry and mental health research.
Our first planned scientific symposia will focus on the state of the science on technology and mental health among adolescents, including the role of social media and novel streaming platforms on brain development and psychiatric distress, to arrive at recommendations for interventions and policy set to improve adolescent mental health.
Develop cross-cutting research and new connections
SPIRIT will fund exploratory projects that include cross-school and cross-department collaboration, to foster high-risk-high-reward projects with seed funding that is nimble and flexible enough to launch innovation.
Priorities will include measurement of the social and physical environment and technology, social equity and health disparities.
The initiative will support research on interventions across the lifecourse to understand dynamic causes of loneliness and psychological distress, and investing in intervention development that builds social capital and resilience in high-risk populations, leveraging knowledge across disciplines in the role of social network connections and sense-of-purpose in a digital age.
In doing so, SPIRIT will become a hub for innovative research that brings together experts across disciplines, combining what would typically be independent and siloed efforts to a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts across the university.
Accelerate the progress of Psychiatric Science
SPIRIT will fund medium and large-scale research projects in our core areas of focus (social determinants of mental health, addressing social inequalities, and investing in child and adolescent primary prevention efforts) that bridge faculty across Columbia departments and schools, provide training opportunities for the next generation of scientists, and combine areas of expertise to produce science that goes beyond what investigators accomplish within their own disciplines.
Train the next generation of scholars
SPIRIT will provide the scaffolding that trains the next generation of mental health scholars.
We have a 50-year history of predoctoral and postdoctoral psychiatric epidemiology training at Columbia University, and with additional support through an initiative, we will be able to expand the reach of the faculty who serve as mentors to students, increase the training opportunities through research, and provide additional support for trainees to propose and conduct their own mentored research through SPIRIT resources.
We also plan to increase available support for early career scholars at the Assistant Professor level.
BE PART OF OUR MISSION