IMH Lunchtime Webinar with Dr. Valeria Mondelli

Identifying Depression Early in Adolescence: a spotlight on the environment and immune system

In this talk Dr Mondelli will introduce the work and some of the recent findings of the multidisciplinary global mental health consortium Identifying Depression Early in Adolescence (IDEA). She will discuss the relevance of looking at the interaction between psychosocial and biological risk factors of adolescent depression with a particular focus on the immune system. Lastly, she will present some of her data on inflammation and depression in adult populations and discuss how these may be relevant for adolescent depression.

Dr Valeria Mondelli is a Clinical Reader in Psychoneuroimmunology at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at King’s College Hospital. She is leading an international global mental health project aiming to identify adolescents at high risk of depression at an early stage (IDEA project) with the ultimate goal of reducing the onset of depression in adolescence. The main focus of her research has been trying to understand how the brain and body respond to traumatic events during childhood and how these responses contribute to the onset of mental health problems later in life. She has strong expertise in all biological markers involved in our response to stress, including inflammatory markers and cortisol. She has received various awards, including the 2018 Emerging Leaders in Adolescent Mental Health Prize by the Medical Research Foundation. She has published over 140 scientific publications and she is one the 2020 Highly Cited Researchers (Clarivate, Web of Science).