Skip Navigation | ANU Home | Search ANU | | CMHR | CMBE

PATH Through Life

The Personality and Total Health (PATH) Through Life Project is a large (N=7485), ongoing, population-based, longitudinal cohort study of young (20-24 years at baseline), midlife (40-44 years at baseline), and older (60-64 years at baseline) adults randomly selected from the Australian Capital Territory and Queanbeyan regions in Australia.

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. Three waves of data have been collected to date (1999/2002; 2003/2006; 2007/2009).

The PATH Through Life Project is particularly unique for four reasons: the collection of genetic and biological (including MRI) measures; the separation of age and cohort effects through the cohort design with longitudinal follow-ups; the inclusion of the understudied mid-life adult development period; and the inclusion of a young-old sample to investigate the pre-clinical development of age-related changes in memory and cognition.

For further information please visit the PATH Through Life Project webpage.

 

ARU staff members are involved in a number of investigations using the PATH study. These projects include;

• Mind and brain
• Social interactions, social engagement and personality traits over the lifespan
• Mental disorders and predictors of depression

ARU Staff working on PATH

• Professor Kaarin Anstey
• Professor Helen Christensen
• Dr Peter Butterworth
• Dr Nicolas Cherbuin
• Dr Tim Windsor
• Ms Lauren Bartsch
• Mr Philip Batterham
• Dr Richard Burns
• Ms Prapti Gautam

Related Student Projects

• The relationship between mild cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms in the 60 years PATH cohort
  Ms Lauren Bartsch (Phd Candidate)
• The effect of spousal/partner bereavement on thinking skills (cognition) in older adults
  Ms Barabara Boyer (Masters Candidate)
• Frontal lobe changes in normal ageing in PATH
  Ms Prapti Gautam (Phd Candidate)