Description
The Personality & Total Health (PATH) Through Life project is a large, on-going, population-based, longitudinal cohort study comprising approximately 7500 participants ranging from early to late adulthood. The project aims to track and define the lifespan course of depression, anxiety, substance use and cognitive ability, identify environmental risk and protective factors within these domains, and examine the relationships between depression, anxiety and substance use with cognitive ability and dementia.
The PATH Through Life project is a 20 year longitudinal cohort study of 7,485 young (aged 20–24 at baseline), midlife (aged 40–44 at baseline) and older (aged 60–64 at baseline) adults randomly sampled from the electoral roll of the Australian Capital Territory and the nearby city of Queanbeyan.
Aims
The original aims of the project are outlined below.
- To delineate the course of depression, anxiety, substance use and cognitive ability with increasing age across the adult life span.
- To identify environmental risk, genetic risk and protective factors influencing individual differences in the course of these characteristics.
- To investigate interrelationships over time between the three domains of: depression and anxiety, substance use, and cognitive ability and dementia.
These broad aims relate to clinical outcomes that constitute the major burden of disease within the Australian community, and continue to provide the core direction for the project. CHeBA staff collaborate in the neuroimaging, genetics, and clinical chemistry components of the project.
Research Team
PATH Through Life is currently led out of UNSW by Professor Kaarin Anstey, in collaboration with ANU Research School of Population Health. The PATH study commenced in 1999 and was initially led by Professor Tony Jorm. Prof Sachdev has led the normative brain ageing study since Wave 1. Professor Anstey has led the study since 2006 and most recently led the followups of the Wave 5 40s and 60s cohorts. Professor Peter Butterworth led the Wave 5 20s follow-up.
There have been many co-investigators on the grants that have funded PATH and its sub-studies, including: Helen Christensen, Bryan Rogers, Simon Easteal, Perminder Sachdev, Keith Dear, Nicolas Cherbuin, Walter Abhayarathna, Marc Budge, Liana Leach, Richard Burns, Rebecca McKetin, Ben Rattray, Andrew McKinnon, Paul McNamee, and Tim Slade.
Contacts
Research Team Contact
Tanya Price
PATH Project Manager
T 1300 917 295
E info@pathstudy.org.au
Professor Kaarin Anstey
T (02) 9399 1019
E k.anstey@unsw.edu.au
For further information on the study, please visit: http://pathstudy.org.au/
