DISCOVERING GENES FOR MENTAL HEALTH

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Recent years have seen dramatic progress in the field of human genetics, leading to high-resolution maps of genetic markers spanning the genome, more efficient methods for generating marker data, and novel approaches to mapping disease genes. As it has become more feasible to search for disease-susceptibility loci on a genome-wide basis, there has been a dramatic increase in genetic studies of psychiatric traits and other complex traits. However, while there has been an increase in the demand for individuals trained in the multidisciplinary field of statistical genetics, there has been little or no increase in the supply of such individuals. With only a handful of statistical geneticists trained each year, little relief is in sight. Our training program will address the strong need for statistical geneticists. The goal of our training program is to train multidisciplinary statistical geneticists at the interface of human genetics, statistics, and psychiatry in order to develop improved methods for mapping and discovering loci involved in psychiatric and other genetically complex traits. Our goals are: 1) To educate quantitatively-oriented trainees in the paradigms and methodology of modern human genetics; 2) to educate biologically-oriented trainees in the paradigms and methodology of statistics and statistical genetics; 3) to provide training in the particular issues involved in psychiatric and behavioral genetics, including issues of study design, phenotyping, ethics, and data analysis; 4) to provide training in scientific integrity and ethical principles in research. Our premise is that our training program will only be successful if our graduates have extensive training in human genetics, statistics, and psychiatry, and in the interface of these areas. The successful graduate will be able to fluently speak the language of human genetics and psychiatry as well as to have an arsenal of tools to analyze challenging data, and to be able to identify and solve important and outstanding research problems.