Effects of mental disorders on the wellbeing and prosperity of family members and friends

Introduction

Mental disorders have an enduring impact on individuals' wellbeing and economic prosperity. Although it is often assumed that these effects extend to the wellbeing of family members and friends as well, comprehensive large-scale direct investigations have rarely been conducted, and it remains unclear how enduring these influences are.

Project Objectives

This project addresses this fundamental gap in our understanding and substantially extends prior knowledge in two crucial ways:

1. Impact on Family Members: I will estimate how much a person's mental disorder affects the wellbeing and prosperity of family members, including parents and siblings.
2. Effects on Partners: I will study whether these effects extend to partners in later adulthood.
3. Broader Social Impact: I will assess the broader social impact of mental illness across the life course, also estimating the longevity of these wider harmful influences.

Methodology

My research team and I will use several interlinked nationwide Finnish registers to answer these questions. The linked datasets contain rich individual-level information for over three decades for the whole Finnish population, including:

• Complete details of healthcare utilization
• Prescription medication prescribing for approximately 5 million persons over a 20-year observation period

Advantages of the Research

The main advantage of these nationwide registers is that they are truly population-based and free of the biases that are common in research surveys. My team will use state-of-the-art research designs and statistical methods to identify potential causal links.

Expected Outcomes

MENTALNET will deliver cutting-edge knowledge on how mental disorders coalesce in social networks, which can potentially help to reduce the societal impact of mental disorders.