
fever, acute pain) do not need an appointment and may be tested on site

Peter Falkai, Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and coordinator of PriMe. "The New German Center for Mental Health addresses these weaknesses," says Prof. In addition, there was a lack of structure allowing new procedures to be tested in hospital-based settings, hindering an approach that covers patients in all phases of illness equally.

However, this knowledge has not yet been translated into improved diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic methods: Not only was there a lack of technology to understand this complexity in individual patients but additionally, people focused on individual aspects of mental illness thus losing sight of the bigger picture.


Research has led to an improved understanding of the complex interactions between genes, environment and the brain that underlie mental illness. For example, 75 percent of mental illnesses first occur before the age of 25, thus often denying those affected the opportunity to realize a productive and successful life. However, there is also a great awareness of the tasks lying ahead of them: Due to their prevalence, early onset and still unfavorable courses, mental illnesses are among the most widespread disorders with an ever-growing burden of disease both in Germany and worldwide. When the Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek announced at a specially scheduled press conference on March 10 th that the PriMe (Precision in Mental Health) research network (consisting of the LMU Hospital, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Augsburg, the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry and Helmholtz Zentrum) had been made part of the new German Center for Mental Health, there was great joy among all researchers involved. "For the Max Planck Institute in particular, we see our role to be supporting the DZPG to bring new insights into disease mechanisms to patient care more quickly." "We are looking forward to the tasks lying ahead of us and the cooperation", says Director Elisabeth Binder.
