UDUS is a multi-faculty university educating about 33.000 students. The Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the UDUS has a unique double status functioning both as a university hospital with obligations in research and education and as a large psychiatric state hospital with 639 places for inpatient and day-clinic treatment as well as several outpatient departments in total serving a catchment area of about 520.000 inhabitants. The hospital comprises several divisions including one for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and

Psychotherapy and an outpatient service for the early recognition of mental disorders which was founded already in the year 2000 as part of the nationwide "German Research Network on Schizophrenia" (initiated and led by UDUS). Already then the research of the network focused on the early stages of psychoses, and accordingly gathered respective expertise.

For research purposes the psychiatric university hospital provides an own bio-chemical laboratory, and has a very close work-relationship with the Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology (chaired by Prof. Antoch) - both essential for the project. Professor Meisenzahl is Director of the UDUS-Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, and an internationally renowned psychiatrist and scientist, with a longstanding history of highly cited publications in international, high impact journals (h-Index: 40). Before being appointed as the Chair of the Department she was clinical head of the outpatient department and the Centre for Prevention (CEP) at the University of Munich. Dr. Schmidt-Kraepelin is a senior physician with broad experience in conducting clinical trials. He has been the initiator of a multi-center trial with expertise in leading scientific staff and dealing with financial and logistic endeavours.

Following a biopsychosocial system approach, various research approaches are pursued at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Düsseldorf in the sense of a multi-level clinical psychiatric research. The focus is on condition, cause and course, therapy and health services research on the entire spectrum of mental illnesses. The main focus of the clinic lies in the areas of psychopathometry, experimental psychopathology and neuropsychology, clinical psycho- and neurophysiology, functional imaging and neurobiochemistry as well as neuromorphology. In addition, there are more traditional focuses, as mentioned above, but also research on quality assurance in psychiatry, in the context of patient-oriented clinical research questions. The new founded working group for multivariate-pattern analysis combines experience from former studies for early detection and intervention in psychosis, neuroimaging and clinical trials.