Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2010) 368, 3845–3858 doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0142 e-Infrastructures supporting research into depression, self-harm and suicide BY S. MCCAFFERTY, T. DOHERTY, R. O. SINNOTT AND J. WATT* National e-Science Centre, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded Data Management through e-Social Sciences (DAMES) project is investigating, as one of its four research themes, how research into depression, self-harm and suicide may be enhanced through the adoption of e-Science infrastructures and techniques. In this paper, we explore the challenges in supporting such research infrastructures and describe the distributed and heterogeneous datasets that need to be provisioned to support such research. We describe and demonstrate the application of an advanced user and security-driven infrastructure that has been developed specifically to meet these challenges in an on-going study into depression, self-harm and suicide. Keywords: Data Management through e-Social Sciences (DAMES); e-Science; National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation (NeISS); SHIBBOLETH; portal 1. Introduction Depression will affect one in five persons in Scotland at some stage in their lives and is treatable in most cases (DAS 2009). Every day, around two persons die of suicide in Scotland (ChooseLife 2003). Most people contemplating suicide do not want to die; they simply want to stop the pain and difficulties they are suffering. In 2002, the Scottish Executive launched a 10 year strategy and action plan to prevent suicide in Scotland. Among the aims of the plan are to develop a framework to ensure that action is taken both locally and nationally to encourage people to seek help early and improve knowledge and awareness of ‘what works’ to prevent suicide. To try to understand what predisposes individuals to suffer from depression or to try to take their lives, researchers will typically want to look into those individuals’ backgrounds (Borrell et al. 2002). For example, did individuals seek medical help prior to an episode or before being admitted for self-harming or indeed prior to taking their life? Were individuals previously in psychiatric care? What was their household composition? Were they married? What was their occupation and average household income (McLoone 1996; Rezaeian et al. 2006)? Did they excel in secondary education? Did they live with both parents (Boyle et al. 2005; Boyle & Exeter 2007)? Did they suffer from any ailments or have a history of drug taking? Is there a history of mental-health-related problems in their family? Did they live within the vicinity of a park or other recreational space? Are there any correlations between mental-health problems and ethnicity *Author for correspondence (j.watt@nesc.gla.ac.uk). One contribution of 16 to a Theme Issue ‘e-Science: past, present and future I’. This journal is © 2010 The Royal Society 3845