Impact

PRISM addresses the treatment needs of the three most prevalent brain disorders in Europe. The economic burden of these three disorders is huge and most of these costs are indirect  due to lack of productivity. Social withdrawal has been identified as one of the main reasons for mental health related disability benefit claims in the UK (UK Department of Work and Pensions Annual Report, 2012). Moreover, these diseases lie heavily on care givers and impact significantly on their ability to work (Haro et al., 2014).

PRISM will deliver a sustainable European network of preclinical and clinical centres working cooperatively to develop and deliver state of the art (epi-)genetic, imaging and neuropsychological techniques to specifically assess the efficacy of new interventions in SZ, AD and MD.

The project will bridge the important translation gap between discovery and the validation of biomarkers and their associated technologies to a point where they can be deployed reliably and effectively across the network. The PRISM network will establish that quantitative biological parameters can be used to effectively stratify patients using biomarkers for social withdrawal.