A list of ongoing and past research projects that are funded through external grants and led by PopMental members is listed below (individual master/PhD/postdoc projects are not listed here unless they were funded through external competitive grants). Click in a specific project for further details.
SIMS (2025-2028): Socioeconomic inequality and mental health: the impact of social connections
PI: Aina Gabarrell Pascuet
Funding agency: Lundbeck Foundation (LF Postdoc)
Amount: 3,000,000 DKK (∼ 401,900 EUR)
Period: 2025-2028
Aim: The SIMS project explores how social disconnectedness (encompassing loneliness, social isolation, and low social support) affects the association between socioeconomic position and mental disorders in order to identify opportunities for intervention to disrupt the cycle of poverty and mental disorders, particularly among high-risk groups..
SOMULTIMATE (2025-2027): Investigating somatic multimordibity in people with mental disorders using innovative metrics and national register-based data
PI: Tomáš Formánek
Funding agency: European Research Council (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship)
Amount: 247,553.28 EUR
Period: 2025-2027
Aim: The focus of SOMULTIMATE is to apply novel metrics on Danish national, register-based data that allow to better estimate (i) the extent and patterns of somatic multimorbidity in individuals with mental disorders and (ii) the impact of somatic multimorbidity on mortality in these conditions.
EnvironMENTAL (2025-2028): Restorative environments and mental health: Salutogenic potential and equity perspectives
PI: Oleguer Plana-Ripoll (co-applicant: Benedikt Wicki)
Funding agency: Independent Research Fund Denmark (Thematic call)
Amount: 3,168,000 DKK (∼ 425,000 EUR)
Period: 2025-2028
Aim: The main aim of this project is to assess the salutogenetic effect of restorative living environments on mental health by considering the combination of different environmental factors such as green space and transportation noise and their interaction with socioeconomic factors.
MentalSEP (2025-2030): Exploring the interplay between socioeconomic position and mental health through familial and genetic measures
PI: Oleguer Plana-Ripoll
Funding agency: European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant)
Amount: 1,500,000 EUR
Period: 2025-2030
Aim: MentalSEP aims to develop a novel approach to estimate the association between childhood socioeconomic position and subsequent mental health through (i) familial and genetic underlying factors and (ii) measures of mental health symptoms beyond clinically diagnosed mental disorders. The project has a strong methodological component trying to better capture underlying genetic susceptibility and developing data-driven methods capable of combining different data sources.
SocMenDis (2024-2027): Socioeconomic Context and Mental Disorders: quantifying the impact
PI: Linda Ejlskov
Funding agency: Lundbeck Foundation (LF Postdoc)
Amount: 2,305,540 DKK (∼ 309,220 EUR)
Period: 2024-2027
Aim: SocMenDis leverages the unique Danish registers to establish the Danish Socioeconomic Mental Disorder cohort, a prospective register-based cohort of all children born in Denmark with information on psychiatric disorders, health, family function/dysfunction, and socioeconomic context with the aim to estimate the contribution of socioeconomic position to the development of mental disorders from a life course perspective.
MENTTIME (2023-2028): The burden of mental disorders over time
PI: Oleguer Plana-Ripoll
Funding agency: Independent Research Fund Denmark (Sapere Aude Starting Grant)
Amount: 6,192,000 DKK (∼ 832,000 EUR)
Period: 2023-2028
Aim: MENTTIME aims to assess the impact of mental disorders in Denmark over time, and try to disentangle real changes from changes arising from the underlying differences in patient characteristics over time.
InfoMetrics (2022-2027): Informative metrics for a better understanding of mental
health
PI: Oleguer Plana-Ripoll
Funding agency: Lundbeck Foundation (LF Fellowship)
Amount: 10,000,000 DKK (∼ 1,345,000 EUR)
Period: 2022-2027
Aim: The main aim of InfoMetrics is to extend the ‘toolkit’ of health metrics to better understand how mental disorders impact education, employment, general health, and premature mortality. InfoMetrics provides a precise and comprehensive map of the mental health impact in Denmark, developing new metrics and defining factors linked to, e.g., heterogeneity in the association between mental disorders and subsequent mortality.
SocioMental (2022-2025): Excess comorbidity and mortality in mental disorders: understanding the role of socio-economic status
PI: Oleguer Plana-Ripoll
Funding agency: Independent Research Fund Denmark (Research Project 1)
Amount: 2,879,629 DKK (∼ 387,000 EUR)
Period: 2022-2025
Aim: SocioMental aims to use population-based registers from the entire Danish population (~7.5 million) to quantify the contribution of socioeconomic position on the excessive comorbidity and mortality among those who suffer from mental disorders.
FundaMentalHM (2019-2022): Innovative methods for better estimation of Fundamental Health Metrics associated with Mental disorders and other general medical conditions
PI: Oleguer Plana-Ripoll
Funding agency: European Research Council (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship)
Amount: 247,260.96 EUR
Period: 2019-2022
Aim: The focus of FundaMentalHM is to use aggregated data from the GBD Study and register-based individual-level data from the whole Danish population to develop and apply new methodologies in order to (i) provide a comprehensive detailed analysis of comorbidity between mental disorders and other general medical conditions, (ii) advance the area of science related to health metrics by incorporating dependent (instead of independent) comorbidity to the estimates, and (iii) use innovative methods to better estimate the excess mortality associated with mental disorders.
Population Mental Health Group 