Mental Health Award: Transforming early intervention for anxiety, depression and psychosis in young people

This award is structured in two phases: a Foundation Phase followed by an Impact Phase. 

Foundation Phase (open to applications week commencing 28 July 2025) 

Impact Phase (open to applications February 2027)

In the second phase of the funding call, all teams from the Foundation Phase will be invited to apply for the Impact Phase.  We expect the award amount for the Impact Phase to be between £5 million and £8 million and the duration to be up to 5 years. The upper limits will be confirmed during the Foundation Phase.

 Implementation partners could include:

• national or local government agencies
• private sector providers
• healthcare providers
• education providers
• non-government organisations
• community groups
• international organisations

This is not an exhaustive list and more than one implementation partner may be essential for your project.

The research must take place in the United Kingdom and/or low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) but the lead researcher can be based anywhere in the world (except mainland China).

Proposed research projects must:

1. Identify a psychological and/or social intervention for the treatment of anxiety, depression and/or psychosis in young people that has proven to be effective in a controlled or well-supported research setting. Interventions can be delivered through any mode or method (for example, face-to-face, digital, individual or group) or in any setting (for example, school, community or healthcare service)
2. Demonstrate how the Foundation Phase will be used to develop sustainable partnerships and enhance plans for real-world testing of the proposed intervention.
3. Describe outline plans for testing the effectiveness and implementation of the intervention and completing a full economic evaluation for the intervention at the Impact Phase.

Interventions must:

• Be a psychological and/or a social intervention. We define these terms broadly and will consider any intervention targeting improvements in a person’s mental health by changing their cognitions, emotions, or behaviours by influencing psychological processes and/or interventions targeting social connections or social determinants of mental health.
• Focus on early intervention for anxiety, depression and/or psychosis.
• Be targeted at young people. We will consider interventions focused on people aged between 10 and 30, however our priority is to support intervening as early as possible in this age group and we are particularly interested to fund projects with interventions targeted at people under 18. We are including a larger age range to account for the later onset of psychosis and recognising that there are often delays in identifying and diagnosing mental health problems, particularly in LMICs.
• Have one or more clear active ingredients identified for how the main components of the intervention produce a therapeutic effect. This builds on Wellcome’s active ingredients commission for youth anxiety and depression.
• Have existing robust evidence for efficacy in the same broad age group, the same condition and the same mode of delivery that is being proposed for this funding call.
• Have an outlined pathway to implementation at scale with the cost of the intervention low enough to be scalable and sustainable in the proposed context.