About the Lab
The environmental determinants of brain & mental health
We compare twins — who grow up sharing their genes and a childhood home — and follow people across their lives, to tell which of life’s experiences truly shape mental health and which differences only reflect the genes or upbringing people already shared.
What drives the work
Two questions, one method
Causes, not correlations
We seek to understand how environmental factors — socioeconomic disadvantage, toxicants, victimization, and substance use — relate to mental health problems, and to determine whether those associations represent causal processes or statistical confounding. The goal is to identify the changeable mechanisms underlying these connections.
Reducing stigma
Our research works to reduce stigma around psychiatric conditions. Extended longitudinal monitoring reveals that most people meet criteria for a mental-health disorder at some point in their lives — which reframes how common, and how human, these experiences are.
Only about 1 in 6 people reach midlife having never met criteria for a mental-health disorder.
On the lab’s “enduring mental health” research program