The Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Cologne (head: Joachim Klosterkötter) is one of the internationally leading centers in psychiatric prediction and prevention research. Joseph Kambeitz (PI, WP01 Project Leader) is head of the Cologne Early Recognition and Detection Centre for Mental Crisis, the FETZ, which was founded by Joachim Klosterkötter in 1997 as the second of its kind world-wide. The FETZ staff includes psychiatrists and psychologists, who are highly specialized particularly in the detection of persons at risk of psychoses. The center is regularly visited by national and international clinicians and researchers, who are interested in learning the assessments and adapting of the FETZ procedures for their own centers. Projects coordinated by Cologne comprise the multi-center prevention studies of the German Research Network on Schizophrenia, the European Prediction of Psychosis Study, funded within the 5th European Framework Programme as the first trans-European multi-centre project in this area, and PREVENT, a large German multi-center study on prevention funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Cologne takes part in the European Gene-Environment study (EU-GEI), funded within EU-FP7. Based on another funding of the DFG, Cologne developed the 'Schizophrenia Proneness Instrument – Adult version', (SPI-A), which has meanwhile been translated into several other languages. Cologne's prediction and prevention research resulted in a large number of publications in high ranking international journals. These included the first introduction of a prognostic score (the 'EPOS prognostic index') into psychiatric prediction research (Ruhrmann et al., Archives of General Psychiatry 2010), an approach meanwhile adapted by several other studies. Cologne also demonstrated for the first time the prediction of psychosis by an event related potential, the Mismatch Negativity (Bodatsch & Ruhrmann et al., Biological Psychiatry 2011).

Further research includes neurobiological topics (event-related potentials, eye tracking and MRI) as well as neurocognition and social cognition. Cologne has research labs for neuropsychology and cognitive neurophysiology (CCNL; head: Stephan Ruhrmann). The department is part of the University Hospital ('Uniklinik Köln') and has large inpatient and outpatient units, a highly experienced clinical staff and an excellent reputation in the area of psychotic disorders.

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