“It is a great honor to receive this Sapere Aude grant. The grant will allow me to start an ambitious research project to address important challenges in relation to mental health,” says associate professor Oleguer Plana-Ripoll.

With the support of the Sapere Aude grant, Oleguer Plana-Ripoll will use an innovative approach to provide a valid and comprehensive analysis of the mental health impact in Denmark over time. By combining epidemiological data from Danish registries, he proposes to describe the characteristics of people with mental disorders over time and to understand what factors contribute to the changes in the impact of mental disorders on several health and societal outcomes.

Oleguer Plana-Ripoll will gather a research team for this project which is titled MENTTIME: The burden of mental disorders over time. “It is important to me that the research group is diverse and inclusive, and I hope the Sapere Aude grant will help me recruit talented researchers with diverse backgrounds to provide different points of view. I have been lucky to have supportive mentors throughout my career, and I intend to continue this tradition with the next generation of scientists,” says Oleguer Plana-Ripoll.

“Mental disorders are common – one in every three individuals is expected to experience a mental disorder at some point during their life,” says Oleguer Plana-Ripoll and continues: “the entire society is directly or indirectly affected by mental disorders”. His project aims at developing new methods that can account for changes in patient characteristics over time; thus, he will be able to provide a tool to monitor mental disorders and the impact of potential new interventions, for example, those in relation to the newly-developed 10-year plan for psychiatry in Denmark. “In the long term, I hope this type of research will help us better understand patient needs and improve the lives of people with mental disorders and their families”.

Based on interview by The Independent Research Fund Denmark: https://dff.dk/en/grants/research-leaders-2022/researchleader-24?set_language=en