Depression Genetics in Africa (DepGenAfrica)

Understanding the combination of genetic and environmental risk factors that cause depression is key to developing new therapeutics and to relieving the increasing burden they place on societies and economies worldwide. While the last decade has seen huge advances in depression genetics, these have been in European and East Asian populations only. We urgently need to develop a better understanding of depression genetics in Africa populations to correct this inequity. Our consortium will study depression genetics and environmental/social risk factors in three different African countries, comparing the results with studies of African ancestry populations in Europe and the USA. While deepening psychiatric genetics expertise across Africa, we will apply the latest advanced statistical genetics methods to find genetic risk factors for depression that are specific to African populations and that are shared across populations.