MIDAP is the product of a long-standing collaboration, its first predecessor being the multidisciplinary team "Research Group on Psychotherapy and Change" Founded in 2002 and led by Mariane Krause, PhD in Psychology, this group, comprised of psychologists and psychiatrists with extensive clinical and research experience, developed and patented the Generic Indicators of Change, which allow for the evaluation of the psychotherapeutic change process, and the System for Coding Therapeutic Activity (SCAT), a method that allows for the conceptualization of the dialogue between patients and therapists.
Later, with the expansion of the disciplines involved, this group decided to apply to become a research center of excellence of the Millennium Scientific Initiative (MSI), an entity dependent at that time on the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism of the Chilean Government. Thus, in 2012, the Millennium Nucleus "Psychological Intervention and Change in Depression"", which combined psychological, psychosocial, and psychophysiological approaches to reveal the processes involved in the origin and maintenance of depression, as well as to establish the effectiveness of interventions. Through specific interdisciplinary studies, some of the main results were:
(1) The existence of the endocrine response to stress and its interaction with the subjective experience of anxiety.
(2) The cognitive functioning of people with different personality types (differentiating between anaclitic and introjective) and the relationship between these profiles and the level of depressive symptoms.
(3) The brain activity of the therapist and the patient throughout the therapies.
(4) The effectiveness of interventions in mothers with depression during pregnancy and postpartum when the parent's personality type is taken into account; among other findings.
Finally, in 2013, this group of researchers decided to apply for a new ICM competition, winning one of the two Millennium Institutes in Social Sciences awarded at the end of 2014. Thus, the Millennium Institute for Research in Depression and Personality (MIDAP), one of the first Latin American scientific centers dedicated specifically to the study of depression, which seeks to achieve a multidimensional understanding of the disease, studying its genetic, social, and cultural variables, and a more complex perspective on personality. Its goal is to maximize the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for the various disorders studied at MIDAP, generating knowledge that can inform public mental health policies, whether in prevention, therapy, or rehabilitation.
MIDAP is funded by Milenio and other national and international competitive funds. It was directed by Dr. Krause between 2015 and early 2019, when Dr. Juan Pablo Jiménez took over as Director. Between 2015 and 2019, its five host institutions were: Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, University of Chile, Universidad del Desarrollo, Universidad de La Frontera, and Universidad de Valparaíso. In 2019, MIDAP was evaluated according to Milenio's rules, thus being able to advance to its second five-year period, at which time Diego Portales University was added as a new Host Institution.
