An international research programme led by King’s College London will examine how biological, psychological and social influences combine across a person’s life to shape the onset and course of psychosis. The five-year DELTA project is funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award and is due to begin in March 2027.
Researchers plan to draw on 14 global data resources to investigate how risk and protective factors interact over time. They will also explore whether pathways differ by generation, location, sex and ethnic background. The project is intended to build understanding across populations rather than produce a single explanation for psychosis.
Looking beyond one risk factor
Psychosis describes experiences such as hallucinations or delusions that can occur in a range of conditions and circumstances. Psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, can cause serious distress and disability, but people’s experiences and outcomes vary. Symptoms may start at different ages, develop along different courses and respond differently to treatment.
DELTA’s central premise is that these differences are unlikely to be understood by examining one influence in isolation. Biological processes, psychological experiences and social conditions can change over the life course and may interact. The study aims to look at how combinations of risk and protective factors relate to the emergence and progression of psychosis, while comparing patterns across groups and places.
The use of multiple data resources gives the researchers a way to investigate those questions across different populations and time periods. The announcement does not specify the resources individually or describe the analyses in detail, so the eventual reach and comparability of the datasets remain matters for the project to establish. Bringing together evidence from different settings may help researchers ask whether observed patterns are shared or vary between contexts; it does not by itself prove that a particular factor causes psychosis.
Lived experience built into the work
People with lived experience of psychosis are expected to contribute throughout the programme, not only after research questions and interpretations have been settled. A qualitative strand will explore how people understand the causes and outcomes of psychosis in their own lives. Work on this lived-experience platform is being led with University College London.
That role matters because population data can reveal associations and broad patterns but may not capture how people understand their experiences, or what outcomes matter to them. The programme says lived-experience contributors will help shape questions and challenge interpretations. Their involvement complements the data analysis; it is not a substitute for clinical evidence or an individual assessment.
The collaboration includes researchers at King’s and UCL, the Schizophrenia Research Foundation in Chennai, the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. This international structure is relevant to the project’s aim of examining variation by location and population, although the announcement does not identify which countries or groups are represented in each of the 14 resources.
A research programme, not a treatment announcement
The award supports a planned programme of research, not a newly tested therapy or a clinical finding. No results are reported yet, and the work is not due to start until March 2027. The researchers say the longer-term goal is to improve understanding of why psychosis develops differently and to provide a basis for future approaches to care. Those are aims, not demonstrated outcomes or promises of a particular treatment.
Psychosis is complex, and broad research findings cannot determine the cause of an individual’s experience or what care they need. DELTA’s questions concern patterns across populations over time. Its value will depend on what the analyses can reliably show, how differences between data sources are handled and whether insights from lived experience meaningfully shape interpretation. The project’s announcement marks the start of that effort, rather than an answer to those questions.
