Strength in Numbers

Excerpt

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) maintains a comprehensive portfolio of research on depression risk, etiology, pathophysiology, intervention, and services research. This broad portfolio exists because, as with many of our illnesses, there is still much work to be done to identify potent intervention targets for treatment and prevention, develop novel interventions, optimize the effectiveness of the interventions we know to be efficacious, and develop the science to implement and sustain programs that work. With the goal of expediting scientific advances, NIMH encourages investigators in a given field to communicate, collaborate, and share knowledge, data, and resources. The papers presented in this special issue highlight a concerted, grassroots collaborative effort among the investigators in the field of depression prevention that resulted in a proactive, thoughtful sharing of ideas and sharing of individual-level data across studies. For the field, this collaboration presents an opportunity to “see the forest through the trees” and develop an understanding of the state of the science for depression prevention that goes beyond what we can learn from the report of an individual study. …