ZEPSOM Projects overview

The following projects are part of the ZEPSOM (Social and Psychiatric Epidemiology Catchment Area of South-West of Montreal)

The following projects are part of the ZEPSOM (Social and Psychiatric Epidemiology Catchment Area of South-West of Montreal)

The ZEPSOM cohort is a large-scale, longitudinal, community-based, population cohort from Southwest Montreal. In 2007, a total of 2,433 participants (aged 15-65) were randomly selected to assess the prevalence and incidence of psychological distress, mental disorders, and quality of life and to understand the impact of the social, economic, and physical aspects of neighbourhoods on mental health.

The cohort represented a population of 269,720 living in the five neighbourhoods of Montreal. The ZEPSOM study has published over 100 important scientific papers, and actively disseminated new discoveries in nearly 100 major scientific conferences and symposiums worldwide. The scientific impact of this cohort is dramatically increasing, and the research community is benefiting from this unique resource through increased interdisciplinary collaborations.

ZEPSOM-Bio, for its part, was introduced in 2016 to include biospecimen data (genome-wide genetic variations and methylome-wide DNA methylations) and detailed measures of early childhood experiences. The overarching goal of ZEPSOM-Bio was to understand how the genome and social environment interact with stress-related mental illness and to develop a disease risk index for stress-related mental health problems.

ZEPSOM-Intergenerational studies the impact of socioeconomic status on mental health and cognitive functioning through the lifespan, with a particular focus on exploring the intergenerational transmission of parental factors passing onto offspring’s mental health and cognitive functioning.

ZEPSOM-Wellbeing aims to understand how pre-pandemic psychological and social factors, as well as the COVID-19-related factors, are associated with changes in life satisfaction and mental health during the pandemic.

For more information, please check the links on the right for each individual project.