An Overview of Statistical Opportunities in Psychiatric Research

1. An Overview of Statistical Opportunities in Psychiatric Research Douglas R Langbehn MD PhDDepts. of Psychiatry and Biostatistics (secondary)University of IowaIowa City, Iowa For JSM 2012

2. Overview • Statistical opportunities in Psychiatric Research plus … • Anything else having to do with the brain and mind • Great need and demand for … • Nearly every traditional and emerging applied statistical topic

3. Funding Opportunities • Substantial, ongoing NIH funding • 2012 NIH Budget for National Institute on … • Mental Health (NIMH) $1.48 B • Neurologic Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) $1.63 B • Drug Abuse (NIDA) $1.05B • Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism(NIAAA) $0.46B • Additional private funding

4. But More Importantly … • There is a lot to be done • Progress is slow • Progress requires statistical expertise • Personal note:

5. History of Psychiatry and Statistics I • The demise of the Cult of the Expert, Epidemiology and the Biostatistical Tradition • Psychiatric illnesses difficult to define in terms of biological mechanisms • Reliance on phenomenology • Until early 1960s • Phenomenology (and treatment) largely defined by expert opinion • Poor results • 1960s-70s • Epidemiology • Family heritability • Drug trials

6. Led to large consumption of traditional Biostatistics • Linear models and all generalizations • Survival analysis • Longitudinal Modeling • Survey and Health Services statistics • Clinical Trials • Genetic Epidemiology • Any other topic in traditional Epidemiology Statistics • Demand is ongoing

7. History of Psychiatry and Statistics II • Influence of Psychology • Traditional psychometrics • Correlations • Reliability (Inter-rater diagnostic reliability) • Test/scale construction theory • Factor and latent group analysis • Modern psychometrics • Item response theory • Structural Equation modeling • See Dr. Wall’s talk

8. One Other Traditional Interface • Education • Teaching researchers about statistics • Screening tools to train other health workers about brain illness • See Dr. Wang’s talk on screening test construction

9. Psychiatric Research and “Modern” Statistics: Genetics • Traditional family and linkage studies ->High throughput methods

10. GWAS Results For Early Onset Major Depression • Shi, Potash, Knowles et al. Molecular Psychiatry 2011

11. Psychiatric Research and “Modern” Statistics: Genetics • Progress is slow • Do we have the right phenotype definitions? • Supervised and unsupervised learning • (Classification) • See talk by Dr. Tarpey and Petkova

12. Psychiatric Research and “Modern” Statistics: Brain Volume Imaging • Analogous multiple testing problems to those in high throughput genetics • Voxels instead on SNPs

13. White Matter Changes in Huntington’s Disease Tabrizi et al, Lancet Neurology 2012

14. Psychiatric Research and “Modern” Statistics:Newer Imaging Technologies • Functional MRI

15. Newer Imaging Technologies • Diffusion Tensor Imaging Beautiful inferred pictures of connections within brain. Statistical analysis still in its infancy

16. Image Preprocessing • Engineers preprocess with sophisticated mathematical models • Largely aimed at eliminating or controlling noise • Better integration with statisticians?

17. Systems Biology • Brain may be the most complicated biological system Protein Interactions of huntingtin, as of 2004 Goehler et al. Mol Cell 2004

18. Mental Health Statistics (MHS) and Statistics in Mental Health Research (SMHR) interest group • Proposed ASA section • Chairs: • NaihuaDuan, Columbia • Robert Gibbs, U. of Chicago • http://www.healthstats.org/smhr/

19. To Reiterate: • Great need and demand for … • Nearly every traditional and emerging applied statistical topic • Please consider getting involved in Psychiatric and other Brain Illness research