Setting priorities for global mental health research
Mark Tomlinson, Igor Rudan, Shekhar Saxena, Leslie Swartz, Alexander C Tsai & Vikram Patel
Volume 87, Number 6, June 2009, 438-446
Table 2. Ten research questions given lowest priority by members of the Lancet Mental Health Group, 2008a
| Rank | Research question | Percentage |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disorder | Answerable? | Effective? | Deliverable? | Maximum impact? | Equitable? | Weighted score | Agreement | ||||
| 46 | How effective are new, antipsychotic drugs and delivery methods for improved action and fewer side-effects? | S/PSYCH | 81.7 | 70.5 | 31.7 | 49.2 | 53.3 | 58.0 | 66.8 | ||
| 47 | How effective are new techniques for early detection and management of schizophrenia? | S/PSYCH | 77.8 | 52.7 | 42.5 | 46.5 | 63.9 | 56.5 | 59.0 | ||
| 48 | What new, innovative and appropriate interventions can be designed to reduce poor mental health outcomes in at-risk children? | C/AMD | 64.8 | 41.3 | 55.9 | 46.1 | 70.8 | 55.4 | 55.0 | ||
| 49 | What are the benefits of a simpler classification of depressive and anxiety disorders in practice? | CMD | 72.1 | 52.3 | 58.3 | 37.9 | 55.4 | 55.0 | 53.5 | ||
| 50 | How effective are new drugs for the prevention and treatment of child and adolescent mental disorders such as psychosis? | C/AMD | 71.2 | 43.9 | 44.8 | 58.2 | 56.0 | 55.0 | 58.0 | ||
| 51 | How can large-scale, efficient and ethically sound drug discovery research be carried out in LAMI countries? | S/PSYCH | 61.9 | 56.9 | 44.2 | 47.5 | 56.6 | 54.2 | 52.9 | ||
| 52 | How effective are inexpensive, naturally occurring or pharmacological agents that make alcohol intake very unpleasant? (E.g. some antidepressants are used for smoking cessation) | A/DA | 78.4 | 50.0 | 55.3 | 27.2 | 64.9 | 54.1 | 59.4 | ||
| 53 | What are the benefits of new and innovative promotion and prevention programmes? | CMD | 60.8 | 40.0 | 55.8 | 50.8 | 49.2 | 51.6 | 54.1 | ||
| 54 | How effective are new, innovative interventions for alcohol and drug abuse that target biological vulnerability or predisposition, and the interplay between genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in causation and recovery? | A/DA | 62.1 | 47.1 | 42.2 | 49.0 | 50.9 | 50.7 | 52.9 | ||
| 55 | What are the benefits of researching indigenous or local treatments (including non-traditional approaches such as acupuncture and herbal remedies) as potential treatments? | S/PSYCH | 61.9 | 27.4 | 51.8 | 18.4 | 59.5 | 42.2 | 59.6 | ||
A/DA, alcohol and drug abuse; C/AMD, child and adolescent mental disorders; CMD, depression and common mental disorders; HPSR, health policy and systems research; LAMI, low- and middle-income; S/PSYCH, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
a All the listed research options were scored by technical experts in light of five criteria: (1) their potential to generate new knowledge in an ethical way; (2) the likelihood that the intervention resulting from them would be effective; (3) the deliverability, affordability and sustainability of the intervention resulting from them; (4) the resulting intervention’s maximum potential for reducing the burden of disease; and (5) their potential effect on equity in the population.