What we do and don’t fund in mental health
We want to drive a transformative change in the ability to intervene as early as possible in the course of anxiety, depression and psychosis in ways prioritised by the people who experience them.
What we fund
Wellcome’s mental health programme funds both basic and translational research to:
- advance our understanding of how the brain, body and environment interact in the course and resolution of anxiety, depression and psychosis (broadly defined to include obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder)
- find new and improved ways to predict, identify and stratify groups of people so we can provide more timely and personalised interventions
- find new and improved ways of intervening – whether pharmacological or non-pharmacological, provided through healthcare systems or other systems such as societal structures, workplaces, educational organisations, or undertaken by individuals themselves.
We also fund the following activities:
- field building to develop a coherent, focused and shared mental health science agenda that integrates lived experience expertise
- improved data resources, tools and processes that address current challenges in mental health science
- policy work to help create national and international demand for the development and implementation of new and improved interventions.
This applies to mental health specific funding at Wellcome.
Our funding schemes in Discovery Research are open to applications relating to all mental health conditions.
Principles of funding
We are committed to meaningfully involving those with lived experience of anxiety, depression and psychosis. Within our mental health team, lived experience experts shape our governance, direction, decision-making and daily work.
We expect lived experience experts to be involved in all projects and research that we fund as relevant. If lived experience experts are not required for a specific project, we will ask researchers to justify their decision to omit them. Collaboration must not be tokenistic or a tick-box exercise.
We are anti-racist and against data colonialism – the practice of claiming ownership of data that is produced by others for others and appropriating the value from that data. As such, we make sure that research leads are based in the country where data is being sourced.
We believe ground-breaking discoveries are more likely to occur in collaborations between a diverse range of people, so we are working with partners and the people we fund to support a thriving, inclusive research culture.
What we don't fund
- projects that do not focus on anxiety, depression, or psychosis (broadly defined to include obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder)
- work on clinical service provision or reorganisation
- activity that does not advance early intervention.
What funding calls have we launched?
- Mental Health Award: Accelerating scalable digital mental health interventions (Launched 2024)
- Mental Health Award: applying neuroscience to understand symptoms in anxiety, depression and psychosis (Launched 2024)
- Mental Health Award: Understanding how anxiety- and trauma-related problems develop, persist and resolve (Launched 2023)
- Mental Health Award: Finding the right treatment, for the right people, at the right time for anxiety and depression (Launched 2023)
- Mental Health Award: Integrating sleep and circadian science into our understanding and treatment of anxiety, depression and psychosis (Launched 2022)
- Wellcome Mental Health Data Prize (Launched 2022)
- Mental Health Award: looking backwards, moving forward – understanding how interventions for anxiety, depression, and psychosis work (Launched 2021)
- Mental Health Award: improving cognitive and functional outcomes in people experiencing, or at risk of, psychosis (Launched 2021)
We’re spending £16 billion in the decade to 2032 on research and advocacy supporting science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone.
Find out more about the broader grant funding we offer researchers.
You can also apply for one of three Discovery Research awards with a Mental Health research proposal regardless of current specific Mental Health funding calls.
To keep up to date with our funding call launches, follow @WellcomeTrust on Twitter (X) and sign up for our funding newsletter.
What funding calls can we expect in the future?
To support researchers applying for our funding, we’re sharing a broad outline of funding calls that are scheduled to launch in the next couple of years.
These future funding opportunities are still under development, so we have not yet agreed on the specific scope, assessment criteria, or timings. As such, they are subject to change.
2024:
- Understanding biological, psychological and social mechanisms linking heat exposure to anxiety, depression and/or psychosis.
2025:
- Innovative use of longitudinal data to improve our understanding of anxiety, depression and psychosis
- Research for new and improved psychological and social interventions for early intervention in anxiety, depression and psychosis.
2026:
- Mechanistically-informed mental health interventions in youth.