[688] Community Psychiatry

Study of severe mental disorders and their psychosocial aspects. Goal: to improve knowledge in these areas, in order to directly enrich clinical practice.

- The relationships between spirituality, religion, and psychiatry have been at the heart of our work, in collaboration with the Faculty of Psychology of Geneva (Prof. Ch. Gillièron) and the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of Lausanne (Prof. P.-Y. Brandt). This work received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation in Geneva (cohort follow-up, study of the effect of an intervention) and in Quebec (Prof. C. Leclerc), as well as in the United States through a collaboration with Duke University Medical Center (Prof. H.G. Koenig). The American team replicated our research with patients suffering from chronic psychosis and, through collaboration, conducted a similar study in Tanzania (Tanzania Schizophrenia Project: Spirituality and Coping Among Psychiatric Outpatients at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center).

A second National Fund supported a component of our research devoted to the image of God in relation to the attachment of patients suffering from psychosis, compared to control subjects.

Our work is currently exploring the question of the "meaning of life" in its religious and existential dimensions. After some theoretical work on the subject, research was recently conducted in collaboration with Prof. Ph. Courtet and Dr. S. Guillaume (Inserm, U1061, Université Montpellier, Montpellier, France). The results of this work are currently being published.

Project: Prospective study on the meaning of life and narrative identity. This research extends certain aspects of our studies on spirituality. It aims to establish the determinants of meaning in life in patients suffering from psychotic disorders, from a multicultural perspective. We will also study the adaptive mechanisms (meaning-making coping) used by patients to cope with the onset of the illness. The goal is to better understand these patients' recovery paths in order to better support them in this process.

- Other psychosocial research is/has been conducted on treatment adherence, patient financial management, and the development and evaluation of group interventions, including the "Michael's Game" created by Dr. Yasser Khazaal. This latter project was supported by a National Fund.

- An evaluation of the impact of the mobile adult psychiatry team was funded by a private sponsor. It focuses on the effectiveness of this program on clinical parameters, rehospitalization rates, and stress among patients' families.

The patients and families included in this study will be followed up in 2016-2017 to assess their progress and the long-term impact of mobile monitoring. These results will allow us to better target these intensive mobile interventions.

- Collaboration with the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (Dr. Jean-François Etter, PhD), for research on smoking cessation techniques.

- Research on "Clinical, Genetic, and Epigenetic Predictors of Treatment Response in Borderline Personality Disorder," in collaboration with Dr. Nader Perroud, involving a genetic and clinical component. In particular, we are studying the program's effectiveness on patient outcomes, attempting to identify the specific role of its various components.