Culture has impact in the expression of bipolar disorder and it’s extremely important to establish international collaborations, first of all to look at the cultural differences--how the culture play in determining different expressions of bipolar disorder, but also to exchange ideas that you have and new ideas and to get kind of reinforced by this type of collaborations.

In general I think it’s extremely productive to have international collaborations. It is not always easy, because of course although the NIMH does not ban funding for studies that are international, it’s much, much more difficult to get funds for a study that is not run in the United States than for a study that is run in the United States. So in terms of funding, there may be complications which doesn’t mean that it is impossible, but it’s difficult. On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to do collaborative studies where there is funding coming from both countries. So, the center in Europe is funded by European agency and the center in the United States is funded by a U.S. agency.