The Closing the Gap cohort: building a platform for York-led interdisciplinary research programme in mental health

People with severe mental ill health (such as schizophrenia and bipolar illness) experience much poorer physical health than the wider population. Life expectancy is reduced by around 20-25 years, and problems such as diabetes, heart diseases and cancer are twice as common. Understanding the causes of this health gap has been hampered by ‘siloed’ research which often ignores structural causes like poverty, poor housing, or loneliness. York has emerged as a centre of excellence in addressing this health gap, assembling one of the largest groups of people with severe mental illness in the ‘Closing the Gap’ study – around 10,000 people with schizophrenia and bipolar illness from across the UK. With this project, we want to trial and identify how this large group of willing participants can be organised into a cohort, following their health and situation over a long period, so that many future researchers can benefit from the collected data and deepen our understanding of the nature of the health problems in this group.