Within the environMENTAL consortium, we published an article in Nature Mental Health on how mental health research can benefit from large-scale cohort studies and the enrichment of these datasets via macro- together with micro-environmental information, including data from digital tools such as StreetMind. Large population cohorts, such as UK biobank (https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk), the German National Cohort (NAKO; https://nako.de) or the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child study (MoBa; https://www.fhi.no/moba-en), which include up to >500.000 individuals each, have helped to increase our understanding risk and resilience factor for mental health. However, the characterization depth in these large cohorts is often restricted. Given that mental health research also faces new challenges due to societal and planetary changes, including global events, such as climate change or urbanization, there is a need to integrate additional assessments to these cohort studies. In our Commentary, we propose different and efficient ways for behavioural and environmental enrichment of large-scale cohort studies and discuss how the StreetMind platform can contribute.
Read more HERE in Nature Mental Health.