sesam: "Swiss Etiological Study of Adjustment and Mental Health"

Completed Research Project

Title / Titel: sesam: "Swiss Etiological Study of Adjustment and Mental Health"

Original title / Originaltitel: sesam: „Schweizerische ätiologische Studie zur psychischen Gesundheit”

Summary / Zusammenfassung: sesam aims to open the door to a decisive breakthrough in understanding the development of mental health and adjustment to the social, psychological, and biological environments in which we live. Mental health has become a vital issue in Swiss society. The enormous costs of health care as well as the massive individual impact in terms of suffering and disability make it imperative to understand the pre-disease pathways leading to the development of mental disorders and maladjustment. sesam will focus on the complex multi-directional interactions of psychosocial and genetic-biological variables across time and between generations, by combining longitudinal, cross-sectional, and experimental approaches in a coherent interdisciplinary strategy. Beginning with pregnancy and including the entire "risk period" for the development of most mental disorders, a large non-treatment population sample of 3,000 children will be studied together with their parents and grandparents. By adding an experimental manipulation of the nurture component of the assumed etiological factors (i.e., preventive intervention modules in precisely defined high-risk subjects), causal understanding will be enhanced. Among the outstanding conditions that Switzerland offers for sesam are an excellent technical and societal infrastructure, low mobility of the population, and the long-term perspective of the Swiss NCCR program. Using Switzerland’s unique infrastructure, the NCCR will yield a national treasure for scientists, public policy developers, and the future generations of Swiss citizens, strengthening the country's position in a strategically important field of key relevance for society and economy.

The sesam study will generate a large amount of data like questionnaires, biological analysis, genetic data, multimedia content and sequence data. The aim of sesam-db is to design and implement a database with appropriate client software to manage these different types of data and related metadata. Besides the storage and management of data, sesam-db will be used to support the sesam project workflow. Because most of the collected data include personal information about subjects, the sesam project has high requirements on the security of the managed data.

From the computer scientist`s point of view, the sesam project offers the opportunity to apply a variety of database techniques and concepts to a real-world application and extend our understanding of how to manage these complex data analysis requirements. Concepts and techniques of interest include workflow management, data lineage / versioning, quality management, data security management and management of multimedia and sequence data. Possible future research directions of the project include data mining for plausibility checks and information extraction, automated generalization, aggregation and restriction of data exports and generation of plausibility constraints out of questionnaire specifications.

Publications / Publikationen: Glavic B., Dittrich K., the sesam Study team: (2006)
sesam: Ensuring Privacy for a Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study
Workshop Elektronische Datentreuhänderschaft - Anwendungen, Verfahren, Grundlagen at Informatik 2006, Dresden, Germany

Keywords / Suchbegriffe: database systems, workflow management, data security, versioning, psychology, Datenbanksysteme, Datensicherheit, Versionsmanagement, Psychologie

Project Leadership and Contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte

Boris Glavic (Project Leader)

glavic@ifi.uzh.ch

Other Links to external Webpages: http://www.sesamswiss.ch/home/

Funding Source(s) / Unterstützt durch: SNF (Programm NFS/NCCR)
finanziert durch den Nationalen Forschungsschwerpunkt sesam

Duration of Project / Projektdauer: Nov 2005 to Nov 2008