PERSONAL NATURAL ENVIRONMENT-GENE-GUT-BRAIN INTERACTIONS BASED ECOSYSTEM FOR PREVENTION OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN CHILDREN, ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS (PUREMIND)

PUREMIND will deliver the first Integrated Mental Healthcare Ecosystem (IMHE) to predict/early identify Mental Health Disorders (MHD) and create more optimal personalised interventions to prevent MHD and thereby improving wellbeing in children, adolescents, and young adults (0–25 years). The ecosystem will mitigate key challenges associated with MHDs, specifically 1)Detection: 1 in 7 undetected and untreated MHD cases, 2)Efficiency of treatment: lack of tools and guidelines for personalised multidisciplinary interventions that work, 3)Access to Support and Care: long waiting times for care due to lack of trained personnel, 4)Inequality: disparate and inadequate inter- and intra-country mental healthcare services and 5)Modern Cultures and Lifestyle: the increasingly recognised risk factor of digital addiction resulting in sedentary, socially isolated lifestyle contributing to MHD. These will be addressed by PUREMIND’s approach of combining analytical modelling of dynamical systems in the cyber-physical context of a subject’s personal natural environment-gene-gut-brain-MHD interactions process creating a much-needed personalised intervention synthesis framework that will be exploited by an AI engine to deliver optimised personalised intervention, and a unique digital twin educating young people how MHD might develop depending on their environment and lifestyle. These 2 components will be combined in an accessible/ adaptable mobile app MyMind to measure at scale and allow a subject to seamlessly access a 4-tier service architecture involving family, community, clinical and emergency services, to support prediction/early detection of MHD, empowering them to monitor their own mental health at home/educational/community settings and taking preventive actions against MHD. The IMHE will be designed using Implementation Science approach and will be validated in a 12month pilot study in 7 European countries and 2 LMICs covering different socioeconomic and cultural scenarios.