Life Events research project

This FWF funded research project Life Events (entitled “Socio-cognitive and biological responses to maltreatment”) aims to investigate how a history of positive and negative childhood experiences are associated with different aspects of psychological (social behaviour, empathy) and biological (brain function and structure, immune function and inflammation) health in individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) compared to healthy control participants (CP). This multidisciplinary study will assess the association between a history of childhood maltreatment (CM) and psychological well-being at two points in time at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Medical Psychology at the Medical University of Innsbruck (MUI). Additionally, we want to understand how emotional CM affects brain function and structure and biomolecular distress markers (telomere length in immune cells together with inflammatory signaling). To this end, we will perform and analyse magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in collaboration with the Neuroimaging Core Facility (MUI) and collect blood samples in collaboration with the Department of Psychology (Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck). Finally, we will look at a combination of the psychological and biological tests to see if there is a link between emotional CM and health outcomes. The results should help to provide more personalised therapy (i.e. trauma, emotional or empathy-focused treatments) to improve outcomes.