Developing Psychiatric Genetics Community In China

Abstract Since 2014, we have used the platform of the Chinese Psychiatric Genetics Summit Annual Meeting to develop a research community in China. Starting with primarily geneticists, we gradually expanded our members to include psychologists and clinicians. With the supports from the Journal of Psychiatry and Brain Science , we have established a travel award to fund Chinese investigators to attend the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics. High quality abstracts were received to compete for the Award in the 2017 Summit. More importantly, we have gathered senior investigators and their labs with a spectrum of interests, ranging from deep phenotyping, brain imaging, cognitive functions, treatment responses, to animal models and bioinformatics. Not only high-quality research products are expected from this community, it will be able to provide valuable collaboration for foreign investigators, who are interested in studying psychiatric genetics in China, where untreated patients are still commonly seen in psychiatry, and a large population with unique social and culture environment is available for study.