The Department has the potential to establish both a sustainable research expertise and access the networks of health care and social services to conduct the necessary studies. This requires consolidating the critical mass of local academic expertise and building up a long-term infrastructure for doing research.

The proposed project will achieve this through four interrelated parts:

- Development programmes for existing and new staff, PhD programmes, exchange collaboration with research units abroad will enhance the critical mass and expertise of mental health service research at the Department of Psychiatry. This will encompass quantitative and qualitative research methods and address particularly the challenges to health and social care systems in a socially disrupted society and the post conflict reconciliation;

- Within both B&H and wider WBCs we will establish collaborative networks of services to conduct research;

- The research will inform evidence-based guidelines for health and social care that are of national, regional and international importance;

- Finally, grant applications, including for FP7, will be worked out to generate funding for a the future of the centre of excellence that will be established through this project.