Investigating the genetic and environmental contributions to mental wellbeing, within a policy relevant framework.

我的研究着眼于为什么有些人比其他人有更好的心理健康。这不仅指幸福和生活满意度，还包括感恩，感觉你的生活是有价值的，不感到焦虑或沮丧。有一系列的遗传和环境因素相互作用，以决定一个人的幸福。在我读博士期间，我根据我的研究得出了三个广泛的结论。首先，社会关系对心理健康至关重要，即你从家人和朋友那里得到的社会支持。然而，并不是社会互动的所有方面都是积极的——将自己与他人比较往往会对自己的健康产生负面影响，这是人类的天性。研究个人的社会互动和与他人的联系可能是改善幸福感的重要途径，政府应该特别关注这一研究领域。我的第二个结论是，解决不平等问题应该成为政策制定者的首要任务，因为不平等往往是低幸福感的根本原因。最后，我的博士学位表明，需要关注不同的人对福利干预的反应。我们需要使用被证明对所有人有益的干预措施，而不仅仅是对一些人有益，或者我们需要考虑个性化干预措施，以最大限度地为每个人带来积极的反应。我对利用遗传学来理解心理健康也很感兴趣。在过去的十年里，随着越来越多的创新技术推进了我们对人类生命组成部分的理解，基因研究出现了爆炸式增长。我们的每一部分都受到基因的影响，从我们的身高到我们唱歌的能力，甚至是我们通常认为完全是环境因素的事情，比如我们小时候看电视的时间！但这并不是说我们的基因决定了我们的未来。基因的影响是动态的，它们以惊人的复杂方式与外界环境相互作用。我对基因和环境之间复杂的相互作用感兴趣，这些相互作用决定了一个人的心理健康。这是一个非常新的研究领域，它将给我们提供有关机制的新见解。最终，我们希望这项研究的发现能帮助我们开发出改善心理健康的干预措施。在此期间，我希望发展我的想法和技能，使我能够成为“社会科学基因组学”这个新的和令人兴奋的领域的有效研究人员，该领域将遗传学和社会科学的知识和方法结合起来。

My research looks at why it is that some people have better mental wellbeing than others. This not only refers to happiness and life satisfaction, but also things like gratitude, feeling that your life is worthwhile and not feeling anxious or depressed. There are a range of genetic and environmental factors that interact with each other to determine a person's wellbeing. During my PhD, I came to three broad conclusions based on my research. First, social connections are vitally important for mental health, namely in the form of social support that you receive from family and friends. However not all aspects of social interaction are positive - it is human nature to compare your self against others often with negative consequences on your own wellbeing. Tapping into how individuals socially interact and connect with others could be an important way to improve wellbeing, and governments should pay special attention to this area of research. My second conclusion is that tackling inequality should be of high priority for policy makers because it is inequality that is often the root cause of low wellbeing. Finally, my PhD shows that attention needs to be paid how different people respond to wellbeing interventions. We need to use interventions that are proven to be beneficial for all, not just for some, or we need to think about personalising interventions to maximise a positive response for everyone. I am also interested in the use of genetics to understand mental wellbeing. Genetic research has exploded in the past decade as more and more innovative technologies advance our understanding of the building blocks of human life. Every part of us is influenced by genetics, from our height to our ability to sing, even to things that we'd normally think are completely environmental, like the amount of TV we watched as a child! But this is not to say our genes determine our future. Genetic influences are dynamic and they interact with the outside environment in amazing complex ways. I am interested in the complex interactions between genetics and environments to determine an individual's mental wellbeing. This is a really new area of research and this will is going to give us new insights into mechanisms. Eventually, it is hoped that the findings from this research is going to help us develop interventions to improve mental wellbeing. During this fellowship, I wish to develop my ideas and skills that will allow me to become an effective researcher in this new and exciting field of "social science genomics", which works to incorporate knowledge and methods from genetics and social sciences.